Siegmund

I asked my partner how he would have taken 4♦, and he said he thought it was a cuebid in support of clubs (and that opener must be something like 1-2-3-7 on this sequence.) We didn't come to a firm agreement, but at least established where we were coming from. On the posted hand I would have rebid 3♥ not 3♦ over 2♠ -- if I made the negX at all on the first round, which I'm not sure I would have.

I would be surprised if he did have 4 hearts. Doubler's 2nd bid would have been 3♥ with all his 4-5s and some of his 4-6s. The 3♦ says we have long diamonds too weak to start with 2♦ and comes extremely close to denying hearts. Without discussion I'd assume 4♦ was just showing a 7th diamond, still a bad hand. Agreeing to play it forcing would be sensible, if you ever get around to discussing this sequence with your partner. My opinion is influenced some by playing 1♣ (1♠) 3♦ as a fit-jump, not a preempt. If you're not playing fit-jumps then you have much less need of a natural 4♦ bid and much more need of showing the hand with both minors.

I would wait for 8-10ish rather than 6, if I am playing criss-cross... rarely do I even bother discussing playing it. if my points are all concentrated in clubs, I will raise to 3C/4C anyway. On the posted hand, 1D looks good. On many/most 8-10s with support, I start with 1NT. Not so much to play it - if it comes back to me my 2nd bid is 3C - but opps are less likely to come back in and find their major over 1C-1NT than over 1C-C raise, it seems. My 1C-3C is typically 4-7ish - with more 0-3s than 8s or 9s mixed in.

Pass feels like the same thing I'd do over any other 1- or 2-bid showing hearts. I don't see the fix aspect of it either. I guess that at other tables the opps may not have opened.

I am liking ♦A followed by a diamond to the jack. On a good day ♦Q is onside and we establish the 3rd diamond winner immediately. On a bad day it loses, and when we get back in we run all the hearts before we commit ourselves to either playing for 3-3 diamonds or finessing with the K-9. Given the 6-3 spade break, playing West for 4 diamonds is likely better.

For me it's a clear 1♠. I have an agreement that my weak two-bids will either have one or none of the side suits stopped. Not everyone cares for actually having standards for weak twos, however.

For handling this hand type I recommend the West Texas Overcall. El Paso. Get it? (Runs and hides before the rotten vegetables start flying.)

Just tossing in my two bits about terminology. We do have more names for doubles that we really need. Negative and responsive might as well be called takeout (interestingly the term "negative double" appears in some very old bridge books for the then-newly-invented classical takeout double, negative=denying values in the suit doubled.) For me the distinction in names for these higher level doubles depends a lot on our promised holding in the opponent's trump suit. If someone says their double is "takeout" I expect it to deny a trump trick; "optional" to promise at least one trump trick on defense, often semibalanced, pulled well under half the time; "penalty" implying even more in the trump department. "Cards" is, in principle, showing strength without saying anything either way about trumps, but in practice half the people who use this word think it means "very slightly offshape takeout" and half think it means (what I call) optional. This came up in another thread about doubling a 5D opening this week, where a bunch of people all called the double by the same name but had wildly different expectations for doubler's holding.

One more vote for Matula 1994 as the best-written of the Polish Club books. Systemwise I like Matula > WJ2000 > WJ2005 too. That said, however, people playing in the (ACBL) Nationals are not going to be allowed to play Wilkosz, so you will probably find WJ2005 is closest to the system you will face. So, if you're doing it just for some theory, read Matula; if you're doing it to study your opponents' likely style, WJ2005. All three are available free in English at bridgewithdan.com/systems .

My strong preference is to open the major with 5-6s, followed either by bidding diamonds twice, or, with some partners, having an agreement that an otherwise impossible jump shift (say, if our 1-bids are limited enough that the JS can't be a 20 point monster) shows the 5-6. Too often if I open the minor the bidding is already up to 4H when it comes back to me and I don't get the chance to ever bid the spades twice. I have no particular argument with people who play the more traditional style. It's something worth discussing with your partners, which opening they prefer, just so you can keep it in the back of your head if the sequence actually does come up.

I admit I didn't worry as much as I should have about LHO being good enough to duck trick 2 and maintain communication. (The live defenders at my club, as a rule, miss that play.) If there's no chance of LHO having six diamonds, han's line may well be the better one against good defenders.

Any other vulnerability a clear 5♣. At unfavorable, I grit my teeth and force myself to bid only 4, over either opening.

I do not try something cute here, no. If it does continue X-p-p, I'd like partner to bid whichever his better minor is. Is our agreement that we bid 4-card suits up the line, or XX=pick a minor or XX=transfer to clubs?

Oddly, I am willing to gamble on forcing partner to pick a suit at this vulnerability, but might not be at others :rolleyes: I am old-fashioned enough to play 4NT as three-suited and double as cards here, but that probably means you want to count my vote as a vote for takeout-double.

I felt like the 5♣ cuebid was forced, and the 5♠ from East was the single worst overbid of the auction. If we are keeping score I think East did more. But there was lots of enthusiastic bidding, that's for sure.

MFA's agreement re 2H and 3H looks like a great idea. Wish I had thought of it myself. As things currently stand, with my regular partner, X = Qx/Kx/Ax in spades and a desire to compete; 2S min promising 3, 3S 16-18ish. 2H is strong but not necessarily with spade support (often Westernish). The double jumps are fit or splinter as appropriate. We have no agreement about the jump to 3H - I think I would take it as strong with support (but I am not sure what the difference between a jump to 3S/4S and a 3H bid is.)

Our hand being so strong is a huge factor, I think. If we had Kxx Tx T9xx J9xx, I'd be fine with the spade lead. (And the sim confirms that - putting the spade way out in front with that hand, by about as much as it is behind on the actual hand. Make the diamonds JTxx and it's a tie.) It really is going to come down to whether we are sure that declarer has a strong square hand. JLall seemed convinced that wasn't what this auction showed.

I'm going with the plain simple "lead clubs out of my hand and cover whatever LHO puts up" line. It's same idea as ducking spades to East, but repeatable one more time before West threatens to gain an entry.

As posted, I think 1♦-1♥ 1♠-4♦ 4♠-pass is indeed completely WTP. Having no way to make a forcing spade raise (or not knowing what to do on the third round after FSFing) is indeed "TP." (I think Richard Pavlicek and I are the last two people alive who actually like to play responder's jumps as forcing and put all the inv hands through FSF -but the more slam zone trouble hands I see posted on fora, the more I become convinced that people made a big mistake to abandon them.)

You must overcall lighter than I do... yes, I have a little bit more than I might have, but it is still a 7-loser hand and I don't think it's at all close to showing extras. I would be wanting KQJxxx Kx AJx xx or similar to rebid 3S, and even a little more than that, along with uncertainty about the contract, to rebid 2H - AKJxx xx Kxx Axx maybe?

I wish you could explain to me what you think South has beyond "some shape," and what a spade lead is accomplishing, beyond "it stands out." As you said, South passed up a chance to do some more exploring. A lot of the 2-5-1-5 type hands need to know which kings partner has; he didn't cuebid to find out. To me the auction screams that South is semibalanced and hovering right around that 14-point cutoff for a slam on power, i.e., that he cares only about North's controls in bulk. (Still, the sim left all the 5521s in, only kicking out the voids because of the jump to 4NT.) One area where my sim stacked things a bit unfairly against the spade lead is that I required exactly one ace or trump honour to be missing, so it was only when that missing key was SA, or HQ and partner also had SQ, that the spade had a chance. Still, we need two tricks against this slam, and I feel like one of them has to be the SK -- for which we either need SQ+ in partner's hand, or SA in declarer's (and I don't lead a spade unless partner also has SQ), or (SJ in partner's hand, SA in dummy, SQ in declarer, and I don't lead a spade). I am hoping my second trick will come from partner having DJ, CQ, or CT, and declarer needing four tricks out of that minor to make it. SA in South plus any of several stray cards in East feels like a far better bet to me than SQ specifically in East. FWIW I reran the sim with the restriction forcing one key to be missing removed (and limited South to 12-16 HCP since he didnt look for a grand.) Of course the slam makes much more often now but there's more variety in what random honours partner can have. Now we have, in 1000 trials, club 71, diamond 59 heart 59, spade 43.

You knew it had to happen someday.... here comes a double-dummy sim :ph34r: There's room for a lot of interpretation what limits to impose on the hands. Here is what I used: West is K32 T2 QT32 J932. North: balanced 18-19; exactly 3 hearts; clubs not longer than diamonds; two key cards; no HQ South: at least 12 HCP; exactly 5 hearts; no void. NS together hold exactly five out of (4 aces+HK+HQ). I compared only S2, H2, D2, and C2 leads. For my "IMP comparison," I marked a lead as a winner if it sets the contract; no other lead holds declarer to fewer tricks; and some other lead allows declarer to take more tricks. I marked a hand as "doesn't matter" if either all four leads allow the contract to make (possibly some making 6 and others making 7), or all four leads set the contract by the same number of tricks. Doesn't matter - 792/1000 Clubs - 126 Hearts - 113 Diamonds - 99 Spades - 81 For my "MP comparison," I marked a lead as a winner if no other lead holds declarer to fewer tricks and some other lead allows declarer to take more tricks, and marked it as "doesn't matter" if all 4 leads produce the same result. Doesn't matter - 646/1000 Clubs - 253 Hearts - 203 Diamonds - 196 Spades - 138 The results will be quite sensitive to your assumptions about South's hand. In particular my "South >= 12HCP" assumption made it very hard for East to have an ace (he never has more than 4HCP and often has less.) If you allow more distributional 10-11 point hands for South, East's HCP expectation will rise, and the spade lead will fare better. [Edited to add: changing my requirement to South>=10 HCP instead of 12 moves the spade lead into 3rd place: doesnt matter 696/1000; club 183 heart 159 spade 136 diamond 121.] Still, it's a starting point - and reassures me that if my judgment about a lead here is badly off, it's because my judgment about South's likely holding is off, not because I am crazy <_<

South is a bit subminimum, but I can understand taking that view of his hand. But I have no idea what North was smoking. Even if you give south 40% of the blame there is 200% left over for North.

There is room for debate about the gap between "two solutions" and "two good solutions." :D It's the closest I've heard to a reason for why so many people like these maniacal 3- and 4-point responses to 1-bids. The only thing super-light responding has ever gotten me is down in 2NT. I think it's part of the appeal of the Polish club family for me. The 11-18 1-bids are "just like standard bids, with the problem strong hands removed." (Though especially with the strong 2-suiters the problem just comes back to haunt us a couple rounds later in the auction.)

[first answer withdrawn because I didnt see who was declarer] My vote is for C > D > H > S. We're leading through strength with the diamond but that just means that if we force declarer to take an early finesse it will work. The spade is agressive but dangerous. The heart may solve a 2-way finesse but is the suit we're least likely to have a trick in to start with. That seems to leave a club as safest. We are definitely going to need some luck to beat this - SA in declarer's hand and one fortunate face card in partner's, if not more.