Siegmund

+1 to everything in gwnn's post right above mine. Yes, it makes 1NT kind of an idle bid, in this one particular sequence. In other support double sequences like 1D (p or x) 1M (2C), however, no 1NT bid is available and the flat 12-14s have to pass, even if they have 4 cards in the unbid major. You choose whether you want to be able to show the 3-card support, or show the unbid 4-card major. No room to do both. In the posted auction you can either choose to only have the 14s / hands with two spade stoppers / whatevers bid 1NT, or you can choose to split the passing and 1NT-rebidding hands according to major suit lengths. I've never had a partner ask me about that passibility. Only thing I have to add is that this isn't so much a "conflict between" negative and support doubles, as a question whether to extend negative doubles to opener's double after 4th seat overcalls at all -- I'd never assume that they do without discussion, just because I had agreed negative but not support with a given partner.

One of the harder hands to bid at this weekend's sectional. LHO deals. Your side is vulnerable, they are not. ♠AK62 ♥KQ3 ♦K4 ♣K754 a) What do you bid if it goes (3S)-X-(P) to you? b) What do you bid if it goes (3S)-P-(P) to you? I am assuming the majority answer to b) is going to be 3NT. c) ... what methods does partner have at his disposal after 3S-P-P-3NT-P?

Is 1H-1S-2NT followed by South blasting to 6S realistic? It wouldn't be the strangest thing to do, with a 5-loser hand and no fancy methods with an unfamiliar partner. 1H-1S-2NT, followed by South being able to set trumps at the 3-level and demand cuebids, doesn't seem unrealistic at all, though a lot of people don't have the agreements to do it. (And yes, if I am North, I think I might really find the 2NT rebid. It feels like a more honest description of my hand than 2D does, that's for sure.) It's a lot harder to come up with sensible paths to, well, anywhere, after 1H-1S-2D-3C or 1H-1S-2D-3S.

I voted pass. I play my 4th seat jumps heavier than a lot of forum posters do - I aim to be within 1 trick of my bid, usually - so for me this hand is between a half-trick and full trick shy of a 3C opening. If my long suit were anything else I'd open 2 of it. 3C is an understandable option.

IMO it's just about exactly the opposite of how OP put it: I play a lot of 2/1 with pickup partners because even if I don't like all the default agreements at least I am confident there won't be many misunderstandings. If you have plenty of time for discussion about your 2nd round rebids, your fsf/nmf style, etc etc, then a SA-based system can become a very effective choice especially at MP, but it's risky without those discussions.

It's hard to fault GIB too badly for giving you a chance to miss the game it knows you can make, before it sacrifices against it.

My habit is to pass essentially all of my 4333s here (the ones I might pull would be the ones with aces and spaces in 3 suits and xxx in the last). Lot of good players are posting saying they would pull here though so maybe I need to be pulling more often. I'll admit that it's less obvious to pass here than it is after 1N-2H-2S-3N - not only is partner slightly less likely to be balanced, he's weaker and going to have at least one less non-trump entry.

With my reg p, I would have "succeeded" in staying out of game: 1D-2C(strongly implying no 4CM); 2H(stopper)-3D(natural and nonforcing, willing to give up if 3NT can't be played.) Neither of us would have known we had a 4-3 heart fit. We both would have been acutely aware we were in an anti-field contract, playing a minor partscore with 25 HCP, and sort of expected a bad MP result just because of how often theoretically unsound 3NTs roll home.

If 2NT is nonforcing it pretty firmly denies a 4CM. On that basis, I expect opener's pass, 3C, or 3D to be an offer to play, while opener's 3H or 3S is available to force (whether you agree to play it as shortness or fragment.) What do I prefer? Not to play 2NTNF. Seems mikeh and I are on close to the same page today.

I voted 3D but have no trouble admitting there are lots of times pass or double would have led to a better result.

3H-and-not-close in my book. Short on strength for the game force, and even when I do have enough to splinter, I am pretty strict about not splintering with a singleton ace or king.

What really matters is that you and your partner have some agreement what 4th seat openers look right, rather than what exactly that agreement is. In my preferred methods, this is only a 2S opener, but I know a lot of other people who would would overbid by 1 1/2 or 2 tricks and open 3 in 3rd seat. In 1st 2nd or 3rd its good enough, or even too good, to open 4S favorable, but I think it'd be a significant error to agree to open it that way in 4th, and a much bigger error to open it that way in 4th with an unknown partner.

A jump raise here too. I am more a believer in the LTC than a lot of people on the forum. But there are a lot of distributional 14s that I treat as jump raises. If your hand is more than a full trick better than the worst hand you could have for the single raise, you need to be taking a stronger action. And in the strong-NT world, this means the 3M raise includes relatively few semibalanced 15-17s, and relatively many distributional 14s and hideous 4333 18-19s.

IMO whether you are playing 3C as GFPuppet is a rather minor consideration. The most common losses are when responder is weak and you belonged in the 5-3 major fit you never found. Of course in my neck of the woods, 1NT with a 5-card major is the vast-majority treatment at sectionals and regionals, so there is no "getting back with the field" to be done, just a simple question of getting a lot of average-pluses and the occasional average-minus.

If you cuebid kings freely, of course you do. You have an agreement, you follow it; your partner has said he wants to hear you cuebid with hearts as trumps so do it. In an aces-first partnership it may be that you are unwilling to show a void in clubs to avoid over-exciting partner. That would be a tougher question. But "only 11 points" doesnt enter into it anywhere, that's for sure.

It's common enough that I'd assume that was what 1N-2C-2D-4D meant with an unfamiliar partner. On the other hand, I'd assume 1N-2C-2D-4S was 6S4H with an unfamiliar partner, too - and be afraid to ever use 1N-2C-2D-4H, for ANYthing, without prior discussion. Funny how that works, isnt it? (With my reg p, 4H is agreed as transfer to spades here of course.)

I am one of the strange ones who thinks that 1m-then-3m is a fine description here, with a good 6-card club suit and a 6-loser hand, and a couple of stoppers missing. That said, I am in agreement with the general principle of "if the hand will give you a rebid problem over 1m, open it 1NT even with a 6-card minor" and I do it quite often.

With my favorite partner, we would have played X support, 2NT good/bad, 3H 'good', 3S stopper-asking, 3NT to play, but in the more typical arrangement where X isn't support after 2S, you have a variety of choices what hands to put into the double. I don't really know what is most common.

The hand came up online with an unfamiliar partner (whose profile implied he was better-than-clueless), but it seemed to still be an interesting question even with a regular partnership. Playing with an unknown, and with the usual description of the Capp double being 'penalty-oriented' rather than just 'strong', I do think you have to assume 'doubles of runouts also penalty-oriented' with an unfamiliar partner and no contrary meta-agreement. But this hand is enough to make me question that ;) 3D is an interesting option. I didnt think of that at the table. Maybe I should have. With one fewer diamond I probably would have.

7S for me. It looks to me as if 7S nearly always makes, while 7NT requires both a 3-2 club break and HQ in partner's hand if he has a 5-card club suit, and requires even more from him if he is 4414. How likely do you think partner is to have those extra cards? If he's a religious pointcounter, maybe the odds are in your favor. If he's a religious LTC-er, the cards he has already shown, KQxx Axxx x AKxx, are plenty for the 4D jump, especially with a stray jack somewhere. I don't think partner is 50-50 to have the HQ. @manudude: yes, any time they both make, it's a win for 7NT - but remember that going down in 7NT when there are other people making various small slams and/or 7S costs more than being in 7S when 7NT makes does. I would want 7NT to be making ~75% of the time to bid it here and I think it's barely 50%. 6H is an interesting alternative, but I think it's more likely to convey uncertainty about 6-vs-7, or 6NT-vs-6S, than uncertainty about 7S-vs-7NT to partner, and fail to elicit enough excitement from him when he has it.

Pass. (My meta-agreements say 2NT is Unusual opposite anything of opening-bid strength like Flannery or Precision 2C.) If 2NT was natural and strong I think this is still just barely a pass, with only 16 and no 2nd or 3rd club trick for the opps to set up for me.

You are vul, opps are not. RHO deals and opens a strong notrump. ♠K832 ♥QT87 ♦75 ♣KQ7 You pass, LHO passes, partner doubles, playing Capp. You haven't discussed exactly how strong the double is in balancing seat. Opener runs to 2♦. Do you do anything? If so, what? If not, what are you hoping partner does next? How many matchpoints do you expect if it swishes and you set 2D for 100 or 150?

I second the suggestion for the BIL. I've had a couple of (real-life) students who felt they more than got their money's worth out of it, as far as online mini-lessons and supervised play goes. They will pair you up with a supposedly compatible mentor to play/discuss with weekly, if you choose to join. Or of course you can find your own.

For simple hand generation you can write your own. If you need speed, for rare hand-types, most of us are going to be better off with one of the published ones. And if you want an interface with a double-dummy solver, you better be really good with piping your output to gib, or use one of the published ones. I've been happily using the thomas andrews deal software for some time. Bookmarking a TCL manpage, for syntax on loops and simple math, is a help, in addition to the documentation for the builtin commands. The learning curve was steep but short.

Depending on your learning style, any of 1,2,3 is good for declarer play. As csaba mentioned the Bridge Master 2000 software is excellent (if brutally hard at the higher levels.) Defense I feel more strongly about my #2 answer. Defense happens in the context of interpreting what your partner is doing and cooperating with him. We dont have good software for that yet, and just solving standalone problems is probably a harder way to figure out 'what is worth thinking about' that some directed guidance followed by practice problems is. In either case, live play/lessons with someone you KNOW is a good and patient player is an alternative - but playing with random players is an awful way to try to learn defense, and in general random hands are not as effective for learning as directed practice is: in real life, sometimes bad plays go unpunished and good plays don't succeed, sometimes well-meaning partners and opps give bad advice, sometimes you learn a tactic that works only against an opponent who habitually makes a given type of error, etc.