paulhar

I'm going to give you another rule to confuse you even further. :( Since I haven't heard or read this rule anywhere, I'm going to claim credit for it even though it's nothing but common sense. I'm ready for 40 or so BBO forum members to tell me who should really get credit for this rule. :( Paul's rule (usually for playing for 4 to the queen to drop/finesse) is: Compare the opponent's bidding to the cards they hold. If it appears they have been aggressive, play for 3-1 or worse. If it appears that they have been conservative (which includes auctions where the opponents are silent), play for the drop. Here your opponents have bid up to 4S with only queens and a jack outside their suit, and only eight spades. Would they be likely to do that when one opponent has ♥Qx and the other has a small doubleton? I'm not sure how Zia's rule applied here: you led a small card and I think Zia's rule applies to covering honors.

I could have done this as several polls, but there's too many questions. I have an idea what I think these bids mean, but since I usually play new minor forcing, I'd like to see if my 'standard' thinking is OK. ASSUME: you are playing with a good partner but he will not play new minor forcing, preferring to use 3C and 3D as forcing and natural. Assume 2NT shows 18-19. 1. Is 1C-1H-2NT-3H forcing? 2. If the answer to #1 is yes, what is 1C-1H-2NT-3H-3S? 3. If the answer to #2 is cue-bid, does that imply that opener must rebid his own four-card spade suit with a balanced hand rather than 2NT? 4. If you think opener can bid 2NT with four spades, how does responder get to spades with 4-4? 5. If your answer to #5 is 3S by responder, how does opener decide between 3NT and 4H with three hearts? 6. If your answer to #1 is No, explain how a game-going responder is supposed to get to a 5-3 heart fit. 7. If your answer to #1 is No, and you think 2NT could have 4 spades, explain how a game-going responder is supposed to get to a 4-4 heart fit. 8. Be honest now. Did any of your answers change after reading a later question?

You can't be talking about me. I choose to play with a partner not because of the number of masterpoints he has, but because of the expected compatability of our partnership. Sure, skill matters. But the number of masterpoints hardly is a good indication of skill. Want to find a good partner? Keep your eyes and ears open! You can get an idea if somebody is decent by playing against him. But just as important is, is the person compatible with me, and do I like the person, and will I have fun playing with this person? I can't believe that anybody is so naive as to choose a partner based on the number of masterpoints somebody has. If you told someone you had 6000 masterpoints, they probably wouldn't believe you whether you were telling the truth or not. After I've played a hand like a mouse in a maze, my partners wouldn't believe me if I told the truth! :( Let's step up to the partnership desk. I've done that a couple of times and told the truth. You can imagine how my next few hours went. :( When I had about 100 points and was off the radar screen for anybody good (maybe I'm supporting your supposition with that phrase), I was playing matchpoint pairs and after the event, a player with about 30 points asked me to play in the next tournament with him, citing as his reason for asking that I played a couple of hands really well against them. I agreed and he sent me 63 pages of system notes and we sent a few letters back and forth about defensive carding. We both had more fun and also were more successful than if either of us had been 'discovered' by someone with tons of masterpoints. He won the national Mini-McKenney race the following year. If either of us cared about playing with someone with a lot of points, that whole experience would have been missed. In case you think this is unusual, my wife found her regular partner (prior to me - her last partner was good!) when they were both novices and each discovered that the other had a clue. They came up through the ranks together and now her old partner is a professional bridge player. Neither of them would have been as successful if either of them had found a partner with a few hundred points that wasn't going to improve. I don't know how many masterpoints any of my favorite partners have on BBO. Some might have a lot, some very few. But they're all fun to play with, and we're compatible. (They don't know how many I have either, some would guess zero. :D ) But your blanket statement about playing with you based on the number of masterpoints is just silly. If people notice that you play well, you'll get asked by decent players. Otherwise, not.

I'm sure most of you must think there is cheating here. There might be another quite plausible reason. The player is learning and the kibitzer is the player's pro who will later discuss the player's errors with him. Take away the kibitzer, and the player will wish to go play in the Main Bridge Room where his kibitzer can once again be there to collect hand records and watch the student play.

2S. You won't think your minor suit cards are worthless if partner's next bid is 2NT (probably about 17-18 with 5-4-2-2.) Also, must cater to 6-4 invitational hand; don't punish partner for correctly bidding 2H rather than 3S since you could have held one spade and five hearts. And if partner is weak, maybe you'll get to ruff a heart with the SK. An opponent that tries to stop that ruff may be giving up a trump trick to do so.

Without the initial passes, I would have said you clearly did nothing wrong. I'm leaning toward saying that anyway. Learning Lebensohl implies that partner is attempting to play it also. 3S promises 4 hearts. In light of that, when you show hearts, 5C has to be a cuebid. Unfortunately, it's hard to imagine a passed hand looking for a slam but you have to guess whether partner is highly optimistic or whether he made a mistake. You guessed wrong. That's all there is to it. If partner didn't just forget Lebensohl, he must have something like: xxx, AQxx, x, Axxxx. Although you have a great hand opposite this, slam is still less than 50% and I would have just bid 5H. But 5D isn't unreasonable. If partner could have originally passed something like xx, AQxx, x, Axxxxx, (only you know partner's style), then your 5D bid is going to pay off handsomely. If you had guessed that partner had misused Lebensohl (a tough guess to make because what if he didn't?), passing 5C turns out to be a winner. Playing a new conventions usually lead to one bad result when somebody forgets. It's happened to all of us. You seem studious. If your partner is equally studious, you can work out the kinks in one of BBO's Partnership Bidding rooms. I haven't tried it but those that have used it rave about it. You can set parameters for all four hands. Set one to open 1NT, give the next hand a typical overcall, which could be just about anything versus notrump, and randomize. I made the mistake of giving the responder game going hands in a simulation and my partner pointed out that my aggressive bids were working becuase I knew all the hands had at least 26 points. Bid a few that way, then turn it around and let the other hand be the 1NT opener. Many kinks will be worked out before you play a single card. It would also be helpful during this practice if both you and partner had an identical explanation of the convention so that when talking about an auction, you could say, "Here in the fourth paragraph..."

As usual, I'm going to disagree with most of the respondants. Firstly, to overcall 2NT with 14 in direct seat is just asking for trouble. LHO is unlimited and you could be going for a huge telephone number. Attempts by your partner to run when you have spade length aren't likely to be successful. On the other hand, you could easily have 27-28 points when you're in balancing seat with 14 points. It is true that RHO could punish you, but he in theory hasn't got enough to even look for a game. (If your opponents play 8-10 weak 2's, you're on a lot riskier ground here - I've seen people play that and sometimes RHO knows he has you when game was out of the question. It's a lot harder when his partner could have 5.) Even if your partner has about 10, you're not a great underdog to make 3NT. When RHO hasn't got spade length, these hands should be easier to play. LHO has lots of spades and hardly any entries, and RHO has everything else. Playing notrump against an weak 2 opening with length in their suit rates to take more tricks than the same two hands declaring with no opposition bidding. So, with your 14 opposite partner's 7, card placing may make you a favoirte to make 2NT, and you'll miss a lot of games if you pass with 14 and spade length. Needless to say, some of these are games that you wouldn't get to without the 2S bid, but when the opportunity is there, why not seize it? Despite overloading the double, I might sneak down to a good 13 for the bottom of the 2NT range. Partner will pretend I have a strong notrump and I'll be playing some games on a god 13 opposite 10 but I'll also be playing some games on a good 13 opposite 13 or 14. But I plan to make some of those 'weakies' because the opponents have given me a lot of information in the bidding. Frequently, when you're in trouble, the lack of a double might help you place the weak 2 bidder near the top of his range.

First, let me thank uday for his great contribution to BBO. But please, give the members of BBO some credit. I'm not saying anything that isn't widely known. You have some pretty smart players playing here and any that don't know the true value of a masterpoint are going to find out. Far from bashing masterpoints, I think they are the greatest invention of all time to propogate tournament bridge playing - which benefits all of us. The only thing I was questioning was that they had value. Nor am I bashing the ACBL. They do a fine job of providing tournament bridge to those who want it. A lot of players here on BBO who know the true value of a masterpoint nevertheless want to play in the ACBL tournaments online since they have come to expect a well run tournament and it's well worth thair dollar to play. The ACBL also does a pretty fair job of winner recognition which further enhances the value of an ACBL-run event. And despite the negligable value of the masterpoint, we can still guage our success/failure at our annual tournament outing by how many masterpoints we won at THIS year's tournament.

In fact, due to inflation, they have depreciating points here in the US. They don't take them away, but the effect is the same since they keep getting easier to get. Look at the Top 500 races. It doesn't seem that long ago that 1000 points easily won the year's competition, now 3000 might not win. I tried to get more information from www.acbl.org but while they make it very easy to find out what's happening this year in lots of different races, I couldn't find what happened in prior years - perhaps they don't want to make this inflation too obvious. Long before I joined in the Seventies, there was a special 'masterpoint' game where you could win a whole masterpoint! The good players would show up for this game trying to win that one point - wow - whole point. When I was coming up through the ranks, a point was much easier to get (just go to a sectional or regional Swiss Teams and eventually find your level) but the elusive gold points were far more difficult. You had to be first (!) in your section in an unrestricted game, or overall in the same. Which means you had to beat some pretty tough customers. Then came Flight B. I remember a very good friend saying that she would never be a Life Master because she never travelled to tournaments. Then she played in one Flight B event and 26 gold points dropped in her lap. Now, so I don't have to repeat myself, you can see how points are handed out in my earlier post on this thread. The ACBL has now put themselves in the position of aquiring 'the same number of points as my friend who's a good player' an attainable goal for a newbie. They can't do that without inflating the points, just as governments around the world can't finance their spendthrift ways without inflating their dollars. Here in the U.S. we don't need depreciating points. We already effectively have them. Note to jdulmage: Don't be discouraged by the response to your post. Most of my posts get the same response. :rolleyes: Eventually you will find people that agree with you. It feels good when it happens. (Six separate posters have said something like 'for once I agree with paulhar.') I'm a strong supporter of many unpopular positions and sometimes the other participants on the board convince me that I'm wrong but usually I just shake my head and ask myself, "What are they thinking?" like you must be thinking now. By the way, where were you when I was taking the entire BBO board alone on the subject 'player's rating'? Judging from your posts, you might have been my lone source of support.

Maybe you need to be more forceful. If your partner has no conventions on his profile, rather than saying, "SAYC?" perhaps you're better off saying SAYC. Or better yet, SAYC basic with 4th best leads and standard signals. (Maybe better to say UDCA if you're playing during prime Europe time.) It's harder for someone to just say 'No' to that without suggesting an alternative. My theory: if they don't list anything, they'd better be prepared for anything simple you might play. As I found out playing in 11AM (in the US) individuals, that includes the Polish Club. So I make sure to get my 'SAYC.' in first, because believe me, they don't want to be playing a Polish Club with me. You might appreciate the other side of the coin - I was playing with someone with a zillion conventions listed on their profile, ending with etc. I said I would play his profile, and then raised his 1NT to 2. He bid 3D (accepting what he thought was a transfer.) Looked all over that profile, didn't find it anywhere, but 3D didn't look right even if he had diamonds (I had long clubs), so I bid 3NT. He told me after the hand, "That's part of ETC.!" :lol:

I'm surprised at this one. It's hard to believe that someone kibitzing in a tournament would want to sub in the same tournament. First, I would assume that someone who is kibitzing is kibitzing a particular player or pair. That is how they wish to spend that block of time. If they really want to play in a tournament but feel like kibitzing a pair, tournaments are prevalent enough that they can kibitz until the next tournament whisks them away. Somebody who is willing to sub wants to play bridge and might more likely be in the Main Bridge Club playing rather than kibitzing. Kibitzers can always be on the sub list for the tourneys they're not subbing in. That's why I think barring them is short-sighted. Tournament directors can do each other a favor by allowing kibitzers because your kibitzer can be somebody else's sub. If all the TD's bar kibitzers, you might cut down on the total number of subs available for all tourneys. Sure, it's the Prisoner's Dilemma where if others are barring kibitzers while you allow them, you're providing subs for them while they're doing you dirt. (The Prisoner's Dilemma is a situation where everybody has a choice and if everybody takes the choice that is worse for them personally, the whole population benefits, because the choice that is worse for you is better for others by a wider margin. A good example is recycling - it's a pain to do it but if everybody does it it's well worth it.) So maybe if the TD's all make nice and allow kibitzers, there will be a lot more subs to go around - nobody has to feel guilty leaving a table to get called to a tournament if he is only kibitzing anyway.

Did you hear the true story about the lady who was frantic because she lost her masterpoint slips? (back when they had slips - I show my age :) ) Her friend suggested she try her safe deposit box and she replied "Yes, that's where they are!" OK, let's be serious about the value of a masterpoint. :lol: :D :lol: :D :lol: :D :lol: :D :lol: :D :lol: :D :lol: :D :lol: :D :lol: There's a game where people learn the difference between a club and a spade, and how the bidding ladder works, and then play duplicate bridge and win Masterpoints. I am dead serious - it's called Easybridge! (I believe the ! is part of the word.) No matter how many weak pairs show up at a bracketed knockout, some of them will win points. In our Bridge Plus game (a step above EasyBridge!), we suggested that if they could form 16 teams of 4, one of them would win mucho colored points. Although they have yet to give points away as a door prize, the 'Continuous Pairs' at a regional which run opposite the serious events are the next best thing. Hey, let's stratify 'em too! As if that weren't bad enough, they came up with Handicap Games so that everybody could win points. Some clubs handicapped based on previous percentages, so if you played badly enough, eventually your handcap would reach your level of incompetence and you too would win points. At a recent annual club game (I try to play one of THOSE a year too - the ACBL's masterpoint plan has not infected me), we were told halfway through the game that we were leading Flight B. I said, "There must be some kind of mistake." They said, "No mistake, we cut the field in half based on masterpoints per player, and the median pair has both players over 3000." I asked (with my partner's permission of course) whether we could disqualify ourselves from Flight B (permanently!) Let someone else have those points - apparently they aren't worth that much in barter for sex, drugs, or alcahol! :D

There are other issues that determine the right side too. If your side is going to declare and one opponent has shown a long suit that rates to be led, you are usually better off having the bidder on opening lead to protect any honor held by the bidding opponent's RHO. This is true even with something like Kxx opposite Qxx which yields two tricks if LHO leads the suit. Another consideration: Suppose you hold S-6 H-AQ10 D-7432 C-AQ1065. Partner opens 1S, the next hand bids 2S showing spades and a minor, and it's your call. Double dummy, partner rates to be the right side to play notrump. In practice, though, LHO doesn't know his partner's minor and will probably lead a heart. Better to bid 3NT than to play it from partner's side if he happens to hold the ♥Kx or Jxxx. Your RHO probably knows that diamonds are the best lead for their side. Then you get into the dispute between hidden points versus hidden distribution. In matchpoints, a responder to 1NT with 6-1-5-1 might do well to hide his hand by declaring, as he's pretty likely to sneak past an ace with one of his singletons, especially after the other is known. I think this more than offsets the possibility of getting a lead into an AQ and throwing the other singleton.

Paul, posting in expert forum doesnt mean I myself is an expert, but only want to listen to experts' opinion. What matters is logic and analysis, not whether he is an expert or world class. Hongjun I'm misunderstood again :o My point in that post was - how do I know that Walsh is assumed? I personally don't play Walsh, so I'm going to answer these posts assuming I'm playing 'Standard' or '2/1 without Walsh' unless I'm given evidence to the contrary. The message I was repsonding to seemed to imply that I should have known that I was playing Walsh. Since I didn't see any evidence to that fact, the assumption must have been that Walsh is 'standard' for the inhabitants of this forum, which I find quite difficult to believe. (Y'all just jump in there and educate me if I'm supposed to assume Walsh as the default!) Since I was supposed to realize Walsh was being played from the original post, and I couldn't find that fact, the evidence must have been the profile of the original poster. Since that didn't help me either, I have to wonder what evidence Fluffy saw that I missed? Clearly, my posting doesn't imply that I'm an expert either - just that I have something to say that hasn't been said. (I usually avoid the 'me too' posts, so even though it looks like I never agree with anybody, I really do most of the time.) In no way was my reply intended to be a poke at you (flytoox). Quite interestingly, if you DON'T play Walsh, you're hearing a lot of expert opinion which doesn't apply to your partnership. :D And, don't take these answers as an advertisement for Walsh - a lot of fine players don't play Walsh. You may see one of those (not me) discuss his views under a future post resembling 'The EVIL weak four-card major response.' :unsure:

Maybe all the 3NT bidders thought partner could have 4-2-3-4! I must admit, I'd be pretty dumb to bid 3NT knowing that partner had a singleton heart and five clubs. Let's look for clues. I looked at flytoox's profile. No mention of Walsh there. Unless I'm missing the obvious, I don't infer Walsh from the text of the post either. Maybe I'm supposed to assume that if someone is in the expert forum, they play Walsh. Is this really true? That might explain some of my results :rolleyes:

And, if course, your partner fields your falsecard, the trouble starts!

one thing to add to prior post - the committee decided that there was no way I was going to get to keep my +800 if I had doubled.

You'd gladly pass up the opportunity to do it a second time. When I was young and foolish (now I'm just old :D ) we had the following auction: P - P - 1S - Dbl 2NT - P - 3S, etc. We hadn't discussed the situation as a passed hand, but 3S was correctly alerted as showing a K-S controlled psyche (3-6 points, honor in the suit). Of course, I had a minimum opener and couldn't resist the chance to psyche a psyche! The opponents bid and we had 'em for 800 but I foolishly bid 4S and went down 1. (Maybe I wisely bid 4S as will be seen) The club called a disciplinary committee together. As a result of the committee, I was told that I was not allowed to play in the club unless I took the controlled psyches out of the system, and gave up psyching altogether in that club. (I had psyched one of the club's best pairs out of a cold game the prior week, I wonder if that had any bearing on the decision :lol: ) This was before the days of online bridge, so it was club bridge or nothing. I reluctantly gave up psyching and only got called twice on my normal bidding. :lol: Fortunately, I moved away and left the club a much happier place. Maybe psyching a psyche is fun, it it sure is a good way to lose friends.

Not likely. Partner has spade length. Partner will probably try to force rather than try for ruffs. From partner's point of view, he could lead a club and find dummy with: J, xxx, xxx, Q109xxx (ouch! looks like one of my leads! :D )

People seem to be bidding a lot on this hand. All the examples have a singleton heart. Can partner be 4-2-3-4 with two small hearts? If so, 3NT is bad but all else is worse. If I could bid 3♥, and have partner's 3♠ mean 'HELP! is 3NT at all possible? (shall we call this 'last caboose?' :D ) I would do that, otherwise I guess I have to bid 3NT and hope partner can do the right thing with the original example (xxxx, x, Kxx, AKQxx) on which 3NT is a disaster but 5C has play. This is going to be pretty difficult for him since I haven't bid clubs; maybe he can bid 4H, pick a game? Unfortuately, all this sounds like slam tries. Also, some players play this 3H as 11 red cards. In any event, at IMPs, I would assume that partner won't think that 3NT is the right contract if he has a singleton heart, else I would have bid it over 1S.

Most important is to have a good agreement with partner, whatever it is. We would play a middlin' spade since the king would call for a heart and the low one would call for a club. But that's only my partner and me, not a popular treatment, but a simple agreement nevertheless. If this came up on BBO with a random expert for a partner, I wouldn't have a clue (although I would rule out a club :D )

Nothing to do with this thread, but the yellow type is unreadable on my monitor (and probably on others also.) For me, it works to block the type with my mouse, to temporarily see the text. Others might not be so lucky (who knows what happens in Linux?) But I suggest using a different color - thanx!

Judging by the recent Master Solver's Club answers in the Bridge World, I expect you to be far from alone in your 3NT bid. To the Hog: I strongly considered Pass (let sleeping hearts lie.) I finally rejected it, based on two things - first, I expect to go plus at least half the time if I bid, and secondly, everybody else is going to bid and if we all defend 4♥, my partner is a better defender than the field, and it doesn't look like I'm going to have many defensive decisions :D , so I'm going to try for our matchpoints in the defense rather than shoot craps in the bidding. (Maybe that influences me to defend (pass or double) in many close situations)

What an interesting dilemma! Quite possible that both 3NT for us and 4H for them are on... The ♥Q is a big card - might overrruff a spade in a heart contract, might add potency to partner's heart holding in a heart contract, might help stop hearts in notrump. I'm going to bid just 2♣ for now. (I don't think any jump is a preempt - and even if it were, it probably wouldn't shut out LHO who is probably waiting to make a takeout double with a huge hand or bid some hearts. Hopefully, I'll know what to do next time. If I get passed out in 2♣ (in a dream world), it's gotta be better than defending one spade. Hopefully partner can bid notrump. I wouldn't want to be in 3NT over 3S since I don't have hearts or diamonds stopped either and opener, upon winning the ♠A will probably know how to take his five or more tricks. I really don't expect to be defending a spade contract. If anything, I expect to be defending hearts, and if it turns out that way, I have to hope that the bad splits in the majors will give us a plus score.

Exactly what I've been saying on the thread 'Is bridge a difficult game?" I knew that if I waited long enough, I'd find someone that saw things my way. Little did I know it would be on a different thread :lol: Those that have read that thread know that I (and perhaps many others) play a lot less than they used to in tournaments for the same reason. Please don't make BBO a game for lawyers too - I'll have to give up bridge altogether! :( Yeah, sure the overworked directors are going to get help that they can choose to ignore if they wish. But... When you bid like I do, maybe all the bids should be alerted as psyches! :D Quite honestly, the biggest problems are going to come when someone else thinks a bid is a psyche and in reality, it turns out that the player is a novice (who may have 'Expert' in his profile because he's the best in his town) who doesn't know any better. Already people are rude to such novices when they get fixed by them. But to try to administer disciplinary actions against them for failure to register a psyche when they thought they were bidding their hand? And of course, some 'psyches' might be a failure to alert instead. And there are people that I've seen play on BBO for hours on end, after saying that they should have gone to bed hours ago. Now, this poor bleary-eyed person thinks his partner opened and 'responds' 1NT when in fact his opponent opened. Of course he doesn't record the psyche - what a brewhaha waiting for a place to happen!