keylime

Happy Birthday bud.

Phil, you are a softie aren't you..... :)

I'm at the safe harbor. 4333 hands are going to play slow, and I do hold an honor in trump. Passing quietly.

For me, if I fire up two machines on the same IP, and log onto BBO, it's for system testing purposes. I find it a lot easier for me to actually program some hands, see how the flow works, and then adjust as needed. That way I can tell Larry what I've found out, and speed up things. If anything I think I'd play worse with two PC's side by side, than with Larry across the proverbial table....

With Larry and I we use DCB involving singletons once the shape is known.

Also, if you have DSL, you'll want to make sure that the router is dialing out at 30 or 60 second intervals per your ISP. Sometimes that will cause flaky connections.

I like Larry and I's defense, called "Nickel" X = either clubs, or both majors 2C = either diamonds, or clubs and major 2D = diamonds and major 2H/S = natural 2NT = club preempt 3C = both minors 3D = diamond preempt

Even I the sudden pessimist of late, bid 4 with ease.

Let me offer an example of how good I have it with Larry. I can't remember which tourney it was, but Larry goes down in an ice cold contract. I mean, it's diamond series ice cold. I didn't utter a word - then again when I'm the dummy I'm either listening to music (when I am allowed to) or reading the comics or letting my mind wonder so I wasn't really paying attention. Three boards later, I chunk a 3NT hand. A good, chunky, shank job of 3NT where if I count my winners and develop the correct side suit, I'm making 4. Instead, I make 2. So as I mark my minus 10 imps for going down in a game, Larry says to me something like: "Dwayne, you're not supposed to imitate all of my greatness." Talk about disarming the anger I had over chunking an easy hand. We ended up winning that KO match by 47. And, I hope that in D.C. at my home national, when I make the next LM rank, he'll be the one across the table to steer me through. I hope it's similar to how I made LM a few years ago - to go out and win when you need to.

I think what makes Larry and I function so well, is that there's a genuine friendship, and we are each other's favorite partner. Besides that, our style is so similar.

3♠ in the p'ship, is unconditionally forcing, in the p'ship. I agree about the bidding 3♠ pard FWIW.

Hand corrected to show the 3 card club fragment. My point is that I think this treatment may need so many limitations and conditions that for most pairs, it shouldn't be used without a lot of discussion. I'd be curious to see how many pages of notes, or, amount of practice, to get this convention understood properly.

The Serious 3S/NT versus non-Serious 3S/NT argument, with LTTC, is one half of the reason why I play Turbo now. Since I'm felling really nostalgic today, back to the days of KLP where there was a hand that really caught us out in a team game that cost an overall placing, playing Serious: 1S - 2D 2H - 3H 3S - ? 3NT with us, would have been a slam try in spades. Problem is, pard wanted to sign off in 3NT because they held x KJ9x KQJxx KQx, and couldn't. After 4C hit the table we couldn't pull the brakes. We landed in 5H down one when opener showed up with AQxxxx A8xx x Ax, with the queen guarded and the A♦ lead to disallow the diamond pitch. The other table landed at a comfortable 4♥ playing standard methods. In my local 2/1 partnership (yes, I feel the gasps of joy or horror), we've never discussed this treatment. We get along I think just fine.

Back in the days of KLP, double here was takeout, and 2NT were both minors. I still like that concept.

You are dealt this hand, red on white, against a LHO who's very competent, and a RHO who's shaky, in 4th chair: (1D) 1H (3D)* (preemptive) KQJTxxx Qxx x Qx After you elect to raise to 3♥ due to your pard's aggressive tendencies, 4♦ to LHO, double by pard. What is double? <this is a two parter, another thread is coming for the other part>

If you think you're behind, 6NT. It has enough upside for me to give it a shot. If I'm even tho, I pass comfortably.

We don't play symmetric, correct, but we do resolve shape (stupid regulations here).

I don't think there's any infraction here, and I wouldn't give anything more than a "N-S, please have agree on the same thing" statement at the table. I wouldn't have even taken South away from the table. Frankly, West by not opening a suit missed out on possibly getting a partial here or in aiding the defense.

I think about passing, since pard did not bid 3♣ followed by hearts/spades to show a strong hand, for example. Pard may have made their two over one on x K9xx KT9xx KQJx and is trying to just signoff into game.

We normally are zooming in controls in specific circumstances; hence the thought of relay points to substitute for zooming. What we've found is, we had a hard time getting to slam by overbidding or underbidding in some situations, so we want to resolve that before D.C.

Here's the problem we have. Since we have balanced hands in a certain interval of responses, we are trying to determine, what the best method is, to help the strong clubber determine the contents of that balanced hand, in case 3NT isn't the last stopping point. Since we play a control-based method already, the relay points concept does have elegant extensions in our unbalanced module as well, and is something I'm considering as well as the follow-on to the beta asks.

I'm opening, not too happily, but to attack the heart/diamond partials.

Thank you both for this. We're looking to pinpoint better our balanced hand slam versus slam bidding potential, and we think this is an excellent avenue to do so.

Larry and I are thinking about using relay points (i.e. A=3, K=2, Q=1) over balanced hand responses to our strong club. How does relay points work, and how effective are they?

I'm bidding here. As long as 5NT isn't GSF, I bid it to show this hand - a good heart raise to six. And I also play the 4NT and correct to 5♥ treatment too.