Siegmund

Eager to double MP NV. Would still do it, if IMP or if both vul. I would probably let it go unfavorable at imps, since we aren't going to be finding many big games here.

The only theory I've heard was an analogy between laying your cards out on the table to claim and laying a dead body out for embalming and/or displaying said embalmed body at the funeral. The point at which there's absolutely nothing left to do except move on to the next hand. People who use the term in reference to positions where there are still key plays to be made would probably want a different theory. I freely admit that theory ties in with cold = laydown = claimable-right-now meaning which I appear to be in a minority for holding. I can see how the meaning could get extended that way. But even when all 4 hands are posted we're usually talking about the situation a single-dummy player was in or would be in, and we already have other words - "makeable" if it can be made on a layout, or "par result" if neither side makes an error, for instance - for describing the result on the actual layout. (Of course we already have a word "laydown" for my use of cold too...heh.) Such an imprecise language we are blessed and cursed with.

I'm sure we've hashed this one over in the past, but in the "not bidding 5 over 5" thread, it's come up twice today, and I wanted to revisit it. In that thread, the following comments were made (no offence to either of the posters): I've seen this usage sporadically for years, and it always gets on my nerves. The way I learned it, a contract on a finesse was, by definition, not cold. A cold contract was a contract that always made, however the opposing cards fell -- as distinct from 'makeable as the cards lie', or a similar phrase, when we saw all 4 hands rather than just considering what was possible given our hands and the auction. Every now and then in a book of bridge problems it would be used to describe the position after the first few tricks - the position of interest at a key moment was given, and again, 'cold' meant making on any lie of the as-yet-unseen cards. Even as a Lawrenceism it wasn't usually used to describe hands where you had already survived a 50-50 finesse. What sez the forum? Are all makeable contracts described as "cold if ..." now? /rant

Interestingly I have experimented with a very similar system (only in mine 1D promises 4 hearts). I avoided hrothgar's first problem by not asking Memphis, just reading the regulations for myself, and following the path that 1M=5-card major is allowed, and a Polish-eque 1C that handles all hands with 4-card spade suits is allowed, and a 1NT denying a 4-card major is allowed, so my catchall needs to catch hands with 4 hearts. Yes, I freely admit I deliberately did not ask Memphis because I had a feeling they'd do to me what they did to hrothgar. Given that they have allowed a variety of artificial diamond systems (as long as they dont use illegal responses to 1D) I have a hard time believing the regulation-as-written bars constructive but unexpected meanings of 1D. Re average age, it has taken it over 10 years to rise from 67 to almost-69. It might reach 70 in 5 years but almost surely will not reach 71, let alone 72. And we ARE doing a better job of bringing in young players now that we were 20 years ago, just not quite good enough yet.

At the table, I decided to believe my shape and my lack of defense against 4H, and jumped to 4S over 2S. It continued 5D on my left, pass from partner, 5H on my right. We felt good we had pushed them to five, and were more surprised they went off two. I forget the exact spots, but LHO was 2-5-4-2, partner 6-3-2-2, dummy 2-5-4-2 (with only the AJ of diamonds and no other face cards! RHO, one of the best players in the club, explained he didn't want to jump to 4 without a singleton, and thought if he was raising to 3 anyway he'd try and keep me from bidding 4S) .... and our -100 turned out to be a bad score since a lot of east-wests sold out to 4S (and one misdefended 5C and let it make.) @whereagles: the question about 1H-1S-Pass was purely hypothetical, re evaluating this hand.

Pass for me. No need to gamble on bringing in a game. If NS were NV I'd be tempted to try it.

From the club last night (matchpoints, none vul): [hv=pc=n&s=skq5hdq73cjt87653&d=e&v=0&b=14&a=pp1h1s2s]133|200[/hv] Taking as given that nobody opened this with an ugly 2nd seat preempt.... your hand looks a whole lot better the next time around. 1) What is your plan if East passes 1S? 2) What is your plan in the actual auction? (Your call now, and what you'll do next if the opponents compete further)

A. On the other hand, it could also be A. Or aleph. Or alpha. Or door #1. You have to be a loooooooooooong way from "classical weak" IMO for the other choices to come into it.

A generic sim of leads against 1N-3N that I did some time ago shows the the ten slightly better than the x from AT9x and AT9xx, no significant difference for AT9xxx. In all 3 cases the ace was significantly worse. (In a million 1N-3N deals, AT9xxx in a major came up 765 times; T, x, and A gave up 0.42, 0.44, and 0.55 tricks, or 1.14, 1.20, and 1.49 NV imps, against double-dummy par.) Beware that such a sim of leads against 1N-3N will also show (for instance) Q from QJxx as a huge winner over x-from-QJxx, which is one of those things that is more true in a sim (where we compare "blind lead followed by double-dummy play thereafter" with "100% double-dummy play") than in real life - for instance when declarer has like KT8 opposite Axx a double-dummy certainty of 3 tricks against either lead but in practice a guess usually gotten wrong against the x lead. As such, when the sim reports T and x almost equal here, I wouldnt be at all surprised if there are real-life situations that make x better than T.

sorry about duplicate post.

Trying a slightly different approach than cyberyeti or awm I too would like to see players only represent "the country they really care about," not let them hop around a lot, and not move somewhere temporarily with the intention of moving back afterward. Perhaps the requirement could even be that you resign citizenship in the country you have left, or demonstrate in some other less-dramatic fashion that it is a one-way trip (though I cant think of exactly what that should be.) As to the more general question of national pride and pro teams ... perhaps part of the recent problem is that they are still comparative rarities -- seeing one or two pro teams out of a hundred at a regional (and often seeing them not win), but seeing certain names over and over at the top. For most of the 90s I was seeing Nickell this Nickell that like clockwork in my Bulletin. I was saying to myself "now wait a minute... how is it that 20 or 30 years ago we had dozens of world-class players in the US, all of them top-notch with a fair shot at winning a trophy at the nationals, and now we've only got these six guys who win everything in sight?" I was as eager to see a team good enough to unseat Nickell emerge as Ira Corn was in the 60s to see a team good enough to unseat the Italians. As it turns out, that has happened -- partly due to Poland coming out from behind the iron curtain, partly due to sharp new players in Norway, Italy and a few other places, and, for better or worse, partly because Nickell is now one of several people hiring pro teams who compete on something like equal footing.

Sorry, gnasher; it looks like I was looking at the previous iteration of the chart, the one before they added the twelves, sixes, and twos to it. Does indeed appear to be Superchart now. I keep trying to forget just how little is left on the Midchart after the last revision...sigh...

Let's quote the entire item, gnasher: "A transfer opening bid at the two-level or higher showing a weak bid in the suit being transferred to or a type or types of strong hand." A two-way 2C that e.g. shows either a weak hand with hearts or any strong hand, is Mid-chart legal, regardless of what types of strong hands are included. The only question before us here is what to do when the weak hand promises both hearts and spades rather than one. To not allow it on the Midchart, you have to be the type of person who believes that "bidding X on a set of a hands S is allowed, but restricting bidding X to a subset of S is not allowed." We know the ACBL has done this to kick things up from GCC to Midchart -- claiming that weak twos that promise a second suit are not GCC but weak twos that might contain a second suit are -- but I don't recall them doing the same for Mid to Super.

If you're worried about accidents, the practical approach is to just raise 3H to 6H. If you have the methods to explore for seven, especially if you suspect the 1D opener of being a joker, fine. I am surprised to see people still trying to introduce the spade suit over 3H - I guess you REALLY dont trust your partner's declarer play!

Lots of ideas to improve Jac2N in the thread, but... ~cough~cough~ you can hardly blame Jac2N for responder's inability to evaluate his hand. Quacky 4333s do not argue for bidding one more. Even if you believe "18HCP" rather than "7 losers" (or you upgrade the loser count for an extra ace and two jacks in combination) there are a LOT of minimum openers where slam is completely hopeless. Find out who those two responders who passed 1S-2NT-4S were, and ask 'em to be your partner next time.

In the ACBL, I think a lot of directors would rule it as Superchart. I'd like to allow it under (7) of the Mid-chart - it's not quite a transfer to hearts, or a transfer to spades, but it shows a known suit if it is weak, so showing two known suits seems like a bonus, not a setback. You'd have to ask somebody (a few somebodies, preferably) who directs at that level what they think. As you've already heard, it's already widely allowed elsewhere in the world.

4H, to make partner bid game in one or the other of my suits, comes to mind. Thought you guys were crazy about vulnerable games at IMPs :D

2S is fine by me. It's at the top end of the bid, even after we discount our HQ, but it's far from the best hand we could have (one with nothing wasted in hearts), and, even if you ARE a maximum passed hand, that doesn't make your hand a game force opposite a minimum double. (And yes, 3S is preemptive in my part of the world, but I am not good enough for it if it's strong.)

Me: "(and the game with the best chance, 4H, is not likely to be the final contract if either one bids more.)" gwnn: "This is rather startling, what exact auction do you have in mind?" I had in mind a whole bunch of them -- 1H-1S-3H-3N, or 1H-1S-2D-2N-3H(if you have an agreement that H-D-H promises extras vs H-H immediately)-3N, or a crazy 1H-1S-3D that might lead to way too many diamonds -- but anything starting 1H-1S-2D-2H was sure not on the list. I really did not expect to see that 2H rebid get even one vote in the thread let alone a majority. (And I don't think it would get nearly as many votes, if we were looking only at the south hand. I must remember to test that theory out in a month or so...) The only path to 4H that I could imagine was something like 1H-1S-2D-2N-4H.

I blame South for opening 1NT. Even if you like to upgrade, a 14 with no tens, nines, or eights is awful. North, quite reasonably, didn't know his side had an 11-card fit, and expected quite a lot more defense from his partner (one spade may cash, and one more face card elsewhere); I think it should be a forcing pass auction, in which case South MIGHT choose to pull, but others may not -- even so, since North knew that even 4S was going to be on shaky ground though it had total-tricks protection, it's hard for me to fault him too hard for expressing an opinion that 5S was probably going to fail and they needed to collect their supposed 300 or so, delighted at seeing the opps sacrifice against a non-cold game. Or you can just blame the bidding system, if you like. Your system really HAS to approach this auction from the standpoint of your own side bidding to make and assuming your opponents are sacrificing, and you pay off the 10% of the time that they land a lucky 11 tricks.

I like 3NT here, but that's in a partnership where we've explicitly discussed that Good/Bad is still on in this sequence. If you trust your opponents to be sound bidders, you are almost forced to pass, expecting to lose 4 spades as soon as you give up a red trick... the longer I think about it the more I'm going to talk myself into passing even if I am playing good/bad.

Two conservative views, but neither one is that odd (and the game with the best chance, 4H, is not likely to be the final contract if either one bids more.)

For me it's an opening bid if I am playing a majors-first style, but a pass if my partner is the type who responds 2C instead of 1S on a strong 4-2-3-4 hand. Now I do whatever forces to game in spades in our system - probably start with a cuebid. I also consider pass (and the less confident you are that your side has a game, the more you should consider pass.)

A slightly shaky 2NT limit avoids any potential wrongsiding accidents that might happen after a limit raise (and for me that's 2D inverted on in comp after doubles and suit overcalls but I know that's a minority view on here.) I have no great quarrel with downgrading to 1NT if your partnership opens light frequently.

What vulnerability? Vulnerability ALWAYS matters if you're talking about opening a preempt. But I hate opening a preempt with A-K outside anyway. I flip a coin between 1H-then-4H, if that shows distribution-but-not-high-cards in our system, and pass. I'm sure many partnerships play styles that allow a preempt here but I dont.