Siegmund

No laughing, now: 2C (~21+ or 9+ tricks) - 2D (waiting, better than a bust) 4D (9 tricks in diamonds, less than normal 2C high-card strength) - 5D (OK, I may have two tricks for you, but I can't see 3. If you wanted me to cuebid side kings you could have chosen a different bid; 4D said "count your aces and trump winners, and raise accordingly.") And yes I think 9 tricks is a fair estimate, MrAce. Opposite a void you need an honor to drop (youll have to guess whether to lead low to crash a doubleton king or high to smother a doubleton jack, if nothing falls under the ace), opposite a singleton all you need is an even break OR a lucky drop.

I pass it. I am pleasantly surprised to see so few people coughing up a 1S bid on subminimum cards. Can't imagine anything besides those two possibilities crossing anybody's mind.

As already said, which suit a matter for partnership style agreement. (My preference is majors-first, but I speak standard american with a polish accent.) Opening at all: this hand is borderline. Nothing bad is going to happen if you pass, because you're happy to come in over a heart bid/raise at your next turn, so I would lean toward passing. If my major were hearts I might be more inclined to bid. I would really like another defensively oriented card for a 1-level opening.On the other hand a variety of bad things can happen when you open light distributional hands (partner bidding 3NT on his flat 12- or 13-count after you show both your suits is the most common.)

The recent Bridgewinners article notwithstanding I think this is still a 1NT bid with 2 likely club stoppers and 4333 shape. Too timid to pass and KQx in clubs is a big obstacle to doubling for some of us. I even expect to go plus - we will have half the deck at least as often as not though we will rarely go to game, and if partner has a long suit he can get us to it. At IMPs I would understand a pass, since the -200/-500 losses are not balanced by many big wins. If you want to adopt a 'power double' like the Overcall Structure uses, fine, adopt it and alert it accordingly. But I shudder to think what will happen if the whole B/I forum gets wind of the idea that its standard to double with a flat hand and an opening bid. You can get me to double with 4333 when it's three small in the opp's suit, but that's as far as I have been dragged.

IMO it would be legal, ACBL or otherwise. Basically no restrictions on what movement is used, long as you can find a way to type it into the computer and send it to Memphis. But "better"? No. Winners-playing-winners is a way to drag the scores for the whole event closer to average and add noise. Considered acceptable in a Swiss team because people supposedly dont like playing against others of differing ability, at the expense of the rankings.... but.... argh. I'd MUCH rather see a properly seeded Mitchell or Howell or whatever else. (And hey, maybe you can get them to play faster, and get 27 boards in. Or grow the game to 12 or 13 tables.)

Odd but playable, if the rest of your system accommodates it, seems like a good answer. If you try it with a random North American partner, you're more likely to get told "ridiculous."

I'd be considerably happier opening this hand 1C intending to dump partner in the suit of his choice, than I would be opening a weak 1NT knowing partner will be unable to bid with a lot of moderately shapely hands. I'm not sure if I feel strongly enough about that to open 1C even if I am playing a weak notrump, just because I don't have much experience with garden variety weak notrumps.

Put me down for X-then-spades. I would bid 2S on a a bunch of hands a LOT weaker than this, some of them 2 full tricks weaker than this. 2NT is a fair second choice but loses the spade suit. I am a little surprised to be in such a minority.

I learned the same rule. Good principle, helped a lot with many doubling decisions. The only place we differ is "here I certainly would": MPs + opps vul is good news, but I'd still be very worried about sitting for a 1-level double. (Not MP, or opps NV, and I wouldn't even dream of passing.) I voted 3C with some reluctance. Not that I expect anybody to take my opinions over Justin's :)

Right. I want to check #2 and #3. Absent an agreement otherwise, I'd assume it's the same as if responder passed; and absent an agreement about that, new suit by advancer NF.

I liked Mathe when I first started playing seriously (and at that time, I used it after 1M-2M, 1M-3M, 1X-1M-2M, and 1X-1M-3M.) It has been crowded off my card by two things: one being the greater need to use 3NT to sharpen up the precision of cuebidding auctions -- my preference here being 3NT to deny CA so that 4C=shows CA denies DA, 4D = shows CADA denies hearts, etc, rather than Serious/Non-serious, but either way, it seems like a more frequently needed use for 3NT... and the other being the variety of other ways to find out about singletons. I quit using Mathe after 1M-2M after I started playing two-way game tries; I quit using it after 1M-3M when I started playing a variation on Bergen where 1H-2S and 1H-3C distinguish between raises with and without a singleton respectively. And after 1H-1S-3S, in your system you hardly need it; help in one minor is pretty much equivalent to shortness in the other. Even so I am not sure I am willing to give up cuebidding at the 4-level to make help-suit type tries. My set of rules might look a little different than gnasher's but a short list like that is a good idea, once you settle on some basic priorities.

I double and lead a club, without seriously considering bidding on. It looks like at the table I will be wrong, both for not bidding on and for not starting hearts, which partner may have a hard time switching to. I do think partner can have quite a bit less in high cards than he has here, and won't be surprised to get this decision wrong half the time in the future.

I'm not going past 4S on my own, but will definitely give partner a chance to act interested. How I do that is going to depend on our cueing style. 3NT or 4C or 4D may be the right call depending on the agreements.

At this vulnerability maybe it's close enough to make pass a LA. I could understand a director ruling either way on 5D. (If 5D was disallowed and South appealed, I would find the appeal had merit.) Any other vulnerability, bidding on with South's hand is screamingly obvious.

The Burners and Barkers are not consistent with the claim statement. The only two lines to consider are conceding the loser immediately while you still have all 3 other suits stopped, or cashing all the winners and "conceding" the last trick. The former leads to down 1, the latter to making. The director makes a judgment call whether the former counts as normal or not. In that respect, it is indeed 'the same as' the Kx of clubs case in the other thread: there are two lines to consider and declarer believes both lines lead to the same number of tricks. But I think a director is allowed to rule differently in one than the other, if he believes the relative likelihood of the two lines being taken isn't the same. Notice that in the Hogwarts hand, I DON'T consider the line of cashing all the side suits and four spades, coming down to T-5 of spades, and exiting the 5 at trick 12 to go down two. Similarly, in the other thread, if we were at trick 10 and looking at Kxxx opposite AQx, I would not judge "cash two clubs and exit the third" as a normal line. (If someone at the table - including dummy - convinced me, in the other thread, that in fact something like this had preceded the claim, I would rule contract making. As I understood the other thread, we had been messing around with other suits coming down to an end position hoping for a bad discard or a squeeze or something, and then gave up.)

I think the yeti got this one right. A void in the opp's suit, a side 6-card suit, and "negative defensive tricks" (not only will we take 0 tricks on defense, we know that partner has less chance of defensive diamond tricks than he thinks he does) - there is literally no hand less suited to defence than this one. (Well, OK, the same hand with a sixth spade.) If North had some ordinary 5-0-5-3 with 6HCP, then we'd be in territory where somebody might bid 5S absent the hesitation, but is going to be constrained by the BIT UI. Seriously? You can ask that question if the majors are reversed and you're raising hearts to immediately preempt a 4S bid by fourth hand... but I don't think anybody is going to leap to the 5-level just to shut out a 5H bid here. There's no guarantee fourth hand will bid 5H at all (maybe he'll bid clubs, maybe he'll cuebid, maybe he'll double).

KDB and RDV is the sort of thing that in years past would have been hidden in an editable .ini file instead of offered on the regular options menu, maybe :) But extensive and sometimes-confusion customizations are not such odd things in software, thinking of openoffice and firefox addons and stuff. As for the forum posts, since most of us are posting hands with links rather than hard-coding them... it seems that they would either all be displayed in the default form, or (depending how smart the applet is) appear on each person's machine according to their own saved preferences.

I will never bid 2N unless I have spades stopped. With 2254 I bid whichever minor is stronger, with a leaning toward the cheapest choice all else being equal. (On that basis I voted 3C - but I by no means always bid 3C with that shape.) With 2245 I open 1C :)

3H and the final pass were both slight underbids but I don't think there is much blame to be given.

While I realize the people talking about trailing 0s and Kns and Ds were mocking those of us from whom two digits for one card causes a cognitive dissonance.... as a programming point, it would be absolutely trivial to have an array cardlabel(2)="2" cardlabel(3)="3" ... cardlabel(9)="9" cardlabel(10)="T" or "10" as you prefer cardlabel(11)="J" or "V" or "B" as you prefer etc. It's something I already do in my own typesetting software, as an easy way to accomodate both T-vs-10 and spaces between card names (K 10 7 4 3" vs KT743 vs K10743). Surprised it isnt semi-standard practice for software intended to be used internationally. "Language packs" for Windoze applications do essentially the same thing, storing the text for every button/menu item/etc as a variable that depends on one's chosen country.

IMO no way is 4D ever going to be only 5-5. The 2D bid has already promised something too interesting to reopen with a double (I expect 1552/0553 for 2D, though on a really bad day itll be 3550. 0544 would ahve bid 2C) so 4D will be something beyond that. I would guess 6-6 more often than not, plus the most exciting 6-5s. Virtually guarantees a spade void.

I would expect the consensus to be the opposite: partner asked you a question, you denied a specific set of holdings, and he signed off instead of persisting with another question if he liked something else. I prefer the style where a high honour, but not a tripleton, is required. (But with the hand Frances posted, I wouldn't think of going on as opener - and I would be expecting a top for 660-instead-of-600)

[yeah, TRIPLE-posted, oops.]

[deleted, trouble with browser, sorry]

I cant honestly say I would have opened, but my life would be easier now if I had. Pass with a nice 7HCP, and be happy if anybody else bids again.