david_c

Very simply: this 1♠ bid is not a psych. However, if you choose to play in a "no psychs" tourney, it shouldn't surprise you that this sort of ruling happens.

According to google, currently 1538 ... How did you find that out? To get new post, I ranked them by initial posting dating and physically counted them. Even if I could do that with total post, I don't want to count that high. Are you using some index post number? Assuming you're in the "new" version of google groups, you can find some statistics under "About this group"

According to google, currently 1538 ...

:P It's here because I suspected I'd made an intermediate-level mistake on the hand ... At the table I decided to cash ♣AK, thinking that I wanted to keep RHO off lead if at all possible. But I'd overlooked the fact that it would be very difficult for RHO to find the heart return, as long as her partner hadn't been given the chance to signal.

Funnily enough, I actually made a jettison play at the table this evening - my first ever - and I think it's quite pretty (and totally original!), so I thought you might like to see it: [hv=d=n&v=n&n=saqhaxxdaqjtxxckx&s=sjt9xhkqjxxxd8xcx]133|200|Scoring: MP 4♥ by South Lead: ♣x[/hv] The ♣K lost to the ace, and a club was returned, which I ruffed. Then I drew trumps (LHO had three) and took a winning diamond finesse. Then I cashed the ♦A on which RHO showed out. So now LHO has K9 left in diamonds, and I have [hv=d=n&v=n&n=saqhaxxdaqjtxxckx&s=sjt9xhkqjxxxd8xcx]133|200|Scoring: MP 4♥ by South Lead: ♣x[/hv] I can make all but one of the remaining tricks by simply giving up a trick to one of the kings. But if the spade finesse is right I can get an extra overtrick: so I ruffed a diamond and took the spade finesse. Unfortunately that lost, but the play didn't cost because on RHO's club return I can ruff and pitch the ace of spades, leaving my hand good. OK, this is too good to be true - actually I didn't have the ♠9. But RHO had pitched a spade from a four-card suit on one of the trumps, so it worked anyway :blink:

[hv=d=n&v=b&n=skqj5ht9d4cak9752&s=sathk7532dak63ct3]133|200|Scoring: MP 3NT by South Lead: ♠6[/hv] This is a hand from tonight's duplicate at the local club. We reached 3NT on the auction 1♣:1♥,1♠:3NT. How should I have played it?

"I don't understand - if you want to bid game, why didn't you bid 5♣?" Seriously, if you put one of the older members of my club in this position, and they have a minimum hand with maybe four clubs, they will pass some days of the week. Admittedly, this has less to do with the fact that we play Acol, and more to do with the fact that they don't understand the game.

Sounds like a dangerous modern idea to me. You wouldn't want to try anything like this at the club where I learnt to play - if you bid a new suit in order to make a forcing bid, you will be passed out :P Well, OK, if it's a jump bid, you might get away with it ...

Not quite - with a 6-7 hand you were supposed to either bid a 4-card suit at the 1-level or raise to 2♣. We never manufacture anything in Acol :P Still, nowadays everyone seems to play 1NT as denying the values for game opposite a balanced 15-count, just like it does over a 1♥ or 1♠ opening. So that rules out a 1NT bid on this hand, for sure. 3♣ is completely obvious if you're not playing an invitational 2NT; I really don't understand why people don't like the look of it - I mean, I'm no fan of Acol, but these sorts of raises are one of the good parts of the system.

This was FitzGibbon/Mesbur of the Irish team in Istanbul; you can find their CC on the ecats site. Their card says "Blue Club" but I don't believe that's an accurate description.

That's a very interesting question. (Well, I think so anyway ;) ) I would agree that it's highly unlikely that bidding systems are transitive. Even so, it's still possible that an "optimal" bidding system might exist in a theoretical sense. If you're playing a form of rubber bridge, and all you're interested in is maximizing your expected score per hand, I believe it's possible to prove the existence of an optimal bidding system. (Sadly, the proof is non-constructive.) At teams it's more complicated because your chance of winning depends on the system played at the other table; I suspect that there does exist an optimal bidding system, but it's a mixed strategy - "Choose your bidding system according to the following probability distribution." :unsure:

I can only find one sensible line - what am I missing? Cash ♠QJ, ♥A, then cross to ♥Q and cash the other two spades. If both opponents followed to the two hearts, then you pitch diamonds on the spades and then set up a heart trick. (Even if there is a spade still out, it's likely to be in the hand with shorter hearts.) If hearts are breaking 5-1 or worse then pitch hearts on the spades and take the diamond finesse.

I do disagree with this. Yes, if you want to become a good player, there is nothing more important than developing good judgement and learning to play well. But you can't completely ignore the aspect of making agreements with partner, and for most people this process will tend to make their bidding more complicated. There are plenty of good reasons to play relatively complicated systems: 1. Conventions can reduce the amount of guesswork needed. [e.g. playing artificial raises of a 1M opening, to make it easier to decide what level to play at.] 2. You rely less on judgement than if you play a simpler system. (Of course, it would be even better if you could improve your judgement as well, but even then, nobody can get everything right all of the time.) 3. Simple systems tend to have holes, many of which can filled by playing artificial methods. You rarely get a good result when you fall into a hole. 4. If you change your system of opening bids (or overcalls or responses), there will be some hands which are good for the system and some hands which are bad for the system. To a large extent you should expect these to cancel out. However, it is an inescapable fact that some systems are better than others. If you switch to a system which gains you, say, 0.2 IMPs per board on average, then that will increase your chances of winning. Of course, you have to put the effort in to learn the system, but this only has to be done once. After that, you can go on collecting your 0.2 IMPs per board as long as you can keep your partner. 5. If you're playing a system which you believe to be superior to your opponents' system, then this can give you extra confidence. On the other hand, if you are playing a system which you believe is weak in some areas, then you may worry too much about what happens when these things come up. Though, I have to admit, the main reason I tend to play relatively complex systems has nothing to do with wanting to improve my results: 6. Bidding theory is interesting in its own right.

If someone is a good bridge player, then they will play well no matter what system they use. But that doesn't mean it's not possible to improve your results by changing your system. At any level of the game, if you're playing a better system than your opponents then it will increase your chances of winning. That is why, when I hear people being advised that they should forget about system if they want to improve, I don't feel that this is entirely valid. Certainly the advantage you get is relatively small, but if someone has the right mindset for playing an unusual system, they should be not be discouraged from doing so. As for the Hamman quote, clearly he believes that his system is better than standard 5-card majors. Perhaps this is correct. But he has said it in a deliberately provocative way. Obviously it is possible to beat him playing 5-card majors: it's just very, very hard ...

The second sentence is certainly true - responder can't support on 3 cards if opener might have a minimum balanced hand. However, the weak NT does badly in other respects which you ought to be aware of. In my opinion the main one is this: If they overcall 2♦ or higher over your 1♣ opening, then either you have to insist that responder does not pass with any normal 9-10HCP hand, or you have to insist that opener does not pass with a balanced 15-16HCP hand. Or you can do neither, but then you will obviously be missing a lot of good games. This is a well-known problem for natural-based weak NT systems, and it's made worse by playing a short club.

Actually, Capp isn't at all popular here in England. I've never seen anyone playing it. Indeed, until last month it wasn't even legal in most competitions. And we're not going to start playing it now, because it's rubbish :rolleyes:

I think Richard has a good point. It seems that the 1NT opening bid doesn't necessarily promise a balanced hand; it just says "I don't want to lay claim to any of the four suits". And you get the advantage that your high-card strength is very well defined. Personally I'm happy bidding 1NT on the the 5422s and 6322s, and I'm tempted to use it on Precision-2♦ hands, but I think you start getting into trouble when you open 1NT with a singleton in a major suit. I was considering opening a weak no-trump on (14)35 hands, so that my Precision-like 1♦ and 2♣ openings would be better defined, but this loses badly on the hands where partner has five cards opposite the singletion. So I decided that this idea was going a bit too far.

Requiring 13 points for a suit opening and 16-18 for 1NT is fairly old-fashioned. People discovered that if they had a 12-point hand, they would generally get better results from bidding a suit than by passing. In order to accommodate this, all the point ranges moved down by one. So nowadays a 15-17 range for no-trump is standard, and you hardly ever see anyone pass with a 12-point hand. This is probably the method you should be learning if you're a beginner, because you'll find it easier if you're doing the same thing as everyone else. By the way, when you talk about "points" most people will assume you mean high-card points (A=4, K=3, Q=2, J=1). Some books say you should add extra points for distribution, e.g. I was taught to add one point for a 5-card suit and add two points for a 6-card suit. This makes a difference to the number of points needed for an opening bid. But even if you don't do this, you need to be aware that distribution is an important factor to consider, so for example if you have a good 6-card suit and 11 high-card points, you should almost always choose to open.

Agree this would be a nice option to have. It would also be useful when kibitzing - I've found I quite often forget who is declarer because all four hands are presented in the same way.

I don't see the point: responder is invitational and opener is msfit minimum thus why should responder want to force ? Our 2♦ response includes game-forcing hands with hearts, as well as the invitational ones. You could agree to use the relay on the game-forcing hands, but I'd rather not. These problems are all the same as if you're playing natural 2/1GF ... respond 1NT, and if partner doesn't rebid one of your suits you will usually continue with 2NT on the next round. We're using this to show 3-card spade support, with a better hand than a direct raise to 2♠. Similar to "drury".

Could you please explain the continuations after 1♠-2♦ (when shall the opener relay in 2♥ and when shall he further describe...) ? We're playing that 2♥ shows any minimum, and anything else is forcing to game. That's the simplest way of doing it. Other systems that I've seen allow opener to rebid 2♠ with a misfitting minimum hand. This has the advantage of giving better description to opener's 2♥ rebid; the disadvantage is that responder may have to invent a minor suit in order to force after 1♠:2♦,2♠. You can find some discussion on this in the recent topic "invitational jump shifts". My preference (though it's not what I'm currently playing) is to put them into the 1NT response, intending to rebid the minor at the 3-level (assuming that the suit is good enough). If you previously used sequences like 1♠:1NT,2♦:3♣ to show weaker hands, then you have to do something else with those hands. What I like is: over 1♥: Play that 1♥:1NT,2x:2♠ shows a weak 3♣ or 3♦ rebid. over 1♠: Pretend the weak hands don't exist, or play 1♠:3m as a natural weak jump.

Although this is certainly what the 1997 laws say, in fact things have moved on here in England and TDs are allowed to give weighted scores, as Frances said. From the EBU White Book 2004: Of course this is all rather irrelevant to what should happen in an online game. But still, it's probably worth pointing out that most people in England seem to think this rule is rather good.

Personally I think that the 1♣ opening handles this hand rather well. You have an easy rebid whatever partner does (you're never forced to rebid 1NT), and the hand is not far from being balanced anyway. The fact that partner cannot rely on a doubleton diamond makes little difference, because the stronger options of 1♣ don't promise any diamonds either. The "strong club" hands in Polish cover much more than just the game-forcing ones. The book gives 18+ as a guideline, and gives some examples where a 1♣ opening is preferred on even weaker hands. So really they're not that rare at all. Of course, you may decide you prefer to open 1♦, 1♥ or 1♠ with hands in the 18-21 range, in which case you're playing a rather different system.

Me neither :) I really should get off my backside and apply to become a BBO TD ... But from what I've heard, it's easy enough to assign a specific score, but the software doesn't allow you to assign weighted scores. Which is a pity, because that would be very useful for a situation like this one. Though, if I remember correctly, there are some places in the world where weighted scores are not possible in face-to-face bridge (ACBL?) and presumably they cope with it all right. And even a single assigned score is much better than giving A+/A- in my opinion.

I agree that if a director is running short of time, then giving A+/A- might be a reasonable solution. But still, I would hope that this is only used as a last resort. It seems to me that many TDs routinely give out A+/A- even when there is enough time to decide on a proper score assigment. Put yourself in the position of the player who has forgotten to alert his bid. Which of these would you rather hear: 1. "You should have alerted 2♥, so I am going to adjust the score to 4♣-1, because that would be the likely result if N/S had known what your bid meant." 2. "You should have alerted 2♥, so I am going to give you average minus and give N/S average plus." I think that the second type of ruling is much more likely to lead to ill feeling than the first. If you give out A+/A-, you are likely to get complaints from people who don't know the rules (they think it is arbitrary and unfair, particularly if the MI was an honest mistake), and also from people who do know the rules (because the ruling is technically incorrect).