Siegmund

Swiss match against a good but not great team. Favorable vulnerability. [Apologizing for originally saying West dealt and opened:] EAST deals and passes, South passes, West opens 1♠, but the opps are never heard from again. ♠AQTx ♥AKJxx ♦--- ♣AKxx ♠xx ♥x ♦ATxxx ♣Q8xxx We were quite happy with our bidding sequence, as it turned out, but it was a fun one to bid and to play, and wanted to share.

Spent the weekend at a lovely sectional in Missoula, Montana. Lots of interesting hands. Here is a good play problem that came up in the Saturday afternoon pairs: ♠KQ ♥QT82 ♦JT ♣KQJ73 ♠A982 ♥--- ♦AK9654 ♣A95 Both vul, South deals and opens 1♦. It continues (2♦) - 2♥ - (3♥) back to you. Right or wrong, you decide to jump to 6♣. 2D was Michaels, 2H was a good hand with clubs. Unsurprisingly, they lead a heart, which will go to East's jack. Bearing in mind that hoping for even breaks in both minors can't possibly work, what is the best line?

GIB DOES correctly explain bids like 3S as "help-suit slam try" rather than cuebid. In a robot tourney, you can see the explanation of a call you are considering making by mousing over that bid in the bidbox but not clicking unless you like what pops up. I am not 100% sure what GIB thought 5H was but my best guess is "wanting slam unless we have two trump losers" - in which case the explanation it gave would have included "3- 8421 points in H" somewhere. If so, KJ of hearts is enough to go to six, but even with the AK of hearts it's mildly dangerous to try for seven (you want to be in 50% small slams, but more like 70% grand slams, so simply adding one trump winner may not be enough, and GIB has a penchant for aggressive slamming - 31 HCP in a balanced notrump auction is typical.) IMO GIB uses natural slam tries in a lot of places where most humans would cuebid, and with a human partner you would have had a more normal 4C reply to your 3S. Some human partners would have believed the 6 losers rather than the 9 HCP, too, and chosen a game forcing sequence of some kind with the North cards.

Sounds like a fun idea. I will have to see if I can twist any of my partners into testing driving a couple of my experiments sometime. On a Saturday I'm not away at a sectional, that is.

2DWTP for me. I'm not counting either of the side queens at full value here. I don't open weak twos with two outside stoppers, and in close cases tend to open the hands with 2 defensive tricks with 1 and those without with the weak two. Apparently I am showing my age, if I am surprised to even see the question posted, and the first two respondents both opened with 1.

Yes, the dealer machines can also read a human-dealt deck and create a hand record from it. Our club has done this a few times when for whatever reason a set of boards unexpectedly had to be shuffled manually rather than used as predealt. The director put the cards through the machine again to create hand records since the players were accustomed to seeing hand records made available on the web after each game.

I'll compete to 3H if somebody comes back in with 3C, but not volunteering for game or for notrump.

My fit-jumps promise 2 of the top 3, but only 3 trumps. I imagine that too makes them much more frequent than weak jumps. I can remember some number of good games and slams found only because I was playing fit-jumps. I have a hard time remembering many hands where I thought "gee, I wish I had a weak jump available here." There may have been some... but I think the potential for a fit-jump to swing a board to our side is a lot bigger than a WJS's is.

Systems on doesnt seem to make much sense, since most hands worth Stayman or a transfer would have coughed up a 2H or 2S bid over 2D. I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it, since it's very possible to play bridge for 20 years and never see this auction. (I haven't.) Makes me think I should find a more frequent meaning for the 2NT call.

The posted hand is close to my minimum. There are some number of shapely 4s and 5s I will raise to 2M on in comp, especially if NV. Most 9-loser hands. Very rare for me to have 10 losers and less than 6. The upper limit is still around 9. I do have to add that, even playing single raise constructive, if your 1M-P-2M promises 8HCP, you aren't from the same solar system that I am, let alone the same planet.

In a non-2/1 context, I like Bergen much better than any of the off-the-shelf alternatives. I do think there is room for fine-tuning it: I prefer to have the cheapest jump show the 6-9 4-card raise with a singleton somewhere, and either have another call for the 6-9 4-card raise with no shortness or just allow those flat hands to respond 2M. I also like having two strengths of splinters available. After a double or as a passed hand, I am torn as to whether fit-jumps or Bergen, or some sort of half-and-half arrangement, is better. (And I'd MUCH rather have Bergen on in 3rd and 4th than be forced into giving up two bids for 2-way drury.) Perhaps one can have the best of both worlds as a passed hand: 1S-2NT as an artifical raise, 1S-3new as a fit-jump usually with 3-card support. I gather a lot of 2/1 folk like to use the jump shifts to 3m to take some invitational hands out of the 1NTF response (the hands that once would have responded 2m and rebid a nonforcing 3m.) Playing non-GF 2/1s that is pretty much off the table.

At first glance, the argument looked entirely bogus to me. Suppose instead that declarer reasoned "if the HQ is right then I can afford to lose 2 spades and a club, so assume I have a sure trump loser", therefore assumed HQ was wrong, and concluded there was a 2/3 chance of the spade finesse working. The evidence you actually have, it appears, is that 2 of 4 key cards have to be with East for him to have an opening, and 2 of 4 key cards have to be with West for him to have a response. You can debate the odds of a subminimum opening vs a subminimum response, and perhaps conclude that an ace and a queen each is most likely, but opener could have two aces and responder two queens but not vice versa. On digging deeper, your original conclusion resurfaces as true: If responder has only HQ, you will be fine no matter how you play hearts, since you will finesse in spades. If responder has only SQ, it may be necessary to finesse in hearts to pick up trumps. If responder has both, it may be necessary to play for the drop in hearts. Only-HQ, accompanied by one ace, happens in two (irrelevant) ways; Only-SQ, accompanied by one ace, happens in two ways; Both-queens, with both aces with opener, happens in only one way. ...so we finesse, taking the line that caters to more cases. So,on reflection, the original argument reached the right conclusion, though it's not 100% clear to me if that is because it was solid, or just because it got lucky that it hadn't overlooked anything. To my mind it makes more sense to consider all six honor divisions and rule some out as irrelevant or impossible, rather than leaping to a conclusion about SQ first, but as long as your argument doesn't confuse you...

I voted pass, but I have no argument with 1H. I have a pretty big argument with a vulnerable preempt on a ten-high suit and two outside tricks.

I am fine with a slightly heavy 3S. (Even if we can set up the hearts, what are we going to use them for? We already probably have no diamond losers and can ruff clubs...)

There is also a passive defence against most such peeking: make sure that the tables are lined up exactly parallel, so that there are two bodies blocking the line of sight into NS hands at the next table. If there are 13 tables and you put 1-7 in one row and 8-13 in the other, put 7 NEXT TO 8 and 13 next to 1, with a gap in the middle of that line, rather than have 7 diagonal from 8 or 13 diagonal from 1. If the room is not crowded leave extra space between the two lines. It doesn't stop people seeing hands they will play in an hour, but it stops the majority of accidental peeks, and makes it more obvious if someone is twisting and bending all over the place to try to see past his partner to the next table.

When I first started playing a homegrown Polish Club variant in 1996, I used to go through the hand records after every session I played at a regional and identify hands where I got a different result than I would have playing standard. I concluded the system change was worth about 2% per session. I freely admit that I could probably have achieved a similar benefit by tuning my standard methods. (I didn't feel like I LOST 2% per session when I went back to standard a few years later) But I've always had a fondness for system development, and it was an interesting and fun path to improving my bidding, even if it wasn't the most direct path. As hrothgar said, thinking is better for your game than memorizing rules is. A lot of thinking goes into making up and testing new toys. When I experiment with new system ideas now, it is only rarely to solve a sticky bidding situation (most all the common problems I have had a favorite solution to for years) and is much more often a hobby.

While it's true the average high-card expectation only goes up by ~1 HCP for third hand (and down by ~3HCP for first hand, after the pass), that means a lot of partscore hands -- and the death hands where partner has moderate values so that you will be down 1 in your preempt but opps cant make much -- remain in the pool, but a substantial number of game and slam hands for EW have been removed from the pool. If your preempts are relying on the assumption that your opps will always have a game if you are set, you are going to run foul of that assumption a lot more often in 2nd than in 1st. The books do emphasize it more than they might need to for a careful and disciplined reader. In the real world, a great many people, even book readers, somehow remain oblivious to vulnerability and suit quality, let alone whether they are in 1st or 2nd seat, when it comes time to preempt.

As your only superaccept. (And for quite a few folks, all superaccepts promise 4.) I like it approximately equally well as not playing superaccepts at all, and better than any of the usual spacewasters.

At MPs I understand a 1NT opening. That doesn't mean I am necessarily convinced it is better than 2C. Playing Polish I am willing to treat this as a 1C-then-2C "16-20 with clubs" hand, but in a strong club system where my first rebid is unlimited or responder will GF with a misfitting 8, no.

But we do still have online points. They are still going to be colorless, not black, and still not count towards Ace of Clubs, as far as I can tell - the only thing that changed about online points is that all of them count towards one's rank.

When I was playing polish club, I used 1C-(p)-1M-(overall)-X as negative rather than support. Sounds like you may be in a similar position with your nebulous diamond here.

Hopefully partner has it beat. If he doesn't, -590, -690, and -790 are all better than -800, which is likely the best you can hope for in 4S or 5C.

It's a less interesting solution -- but would a Trick 12 situation where a defender's last two cards are the winner of the suit led and something else, and he plays the 'something else' count? The revoke must be corrected and the correction will award this player the trick on which he revoked.

It does depend on partner's style, but I expect them to make 4H much more than half the time. The only way we'd beat it is if our aces score, and partner gets a ruff, AND I get my HQ; or if partner turns up with a side ace and they all cash, i addition to the the ruff and/or HQ. They won't always bid it, certainly, so I think it's reasonable to pass the first time and then try 5C if they do bid 4H rather than bidding 4H immediately -- but against aggressive opponents, there is a lot to be said for the immediate 5C, since we WILL beat 5H considerably more than half the time; that's where our big gains come from, when they guess wrong at the 5-level. Which is the best way to pressure your opponents into an indiscretion all comes down to how well you know the opponents. Indeed not. 8 clubs to the KQ and nothing else opens five clubs at this vulnerability.

It's a Good/Bad 2NT auction with my reg p -- 2NT is essentially never natural for us, once the opponents bid and raise -- and I use it to show a "bad" 3H. (gwnn's method where 2NT is Good and the immediate bid is Bad might be better, but we never bothered working out the details of when to switch the meanings.) Lacking such a method, with partner as a passed hand, it's right on the cusp, and I can understand passing, even if I might bid 3H myself.