KingCovert

Honestly, I think a lot of the criticism of a 4♠ bid here is rather unreasonable. Partner doesn't need to hold 5 spades, 3 will suffice. Your spades are sitting behind the A♠ or opposite the A♠ 90% of the time, possibly more if your opponents religiously don't preempt with an Ace. And, in fact, you just make 4♠ opposite KQ♦ and a singleton club when your partner holds a few spades and the A♠ is onside. Contrary to some of the cherry-picking in this thread, I don't think that hand would bid over 3♣, and yet it still makes. Our singleton heart is valuable, and JTXX of diamonds is an asset on this auction. The A♣ is most likely going to earn us control of the hand at Trick 1, and if a heart lead comes at Trick 1, that's pretty good too! The real concern with bidding 4♠ here, even though I advocate for it, is the singleton diamond lead that will come more often than we'd like. Small diamond to the A♦ and a ruff is breaking our back here a lot. That being said, down 1 is a good save, as long as partner does have a hand that can keep it to down 1. Partner figures for some amount of spade and diamond length, and probably a doubleton club. We can count at least 8 hearts, and 9 (turns out it's 10) clubs between our hand and the bidding of EW. And, there's no reason to suppose that either of EW have a void in their partner's suit. Partner really just figures for a pointy suit holding here, but, if they're holding 6 diamonds and 2 spades? That diamond ruff looks pretty likely now. That being said, the odds of holding 5 points in spades also go down dramatically, leaving increased odds of the A♦ being in partner's hand. Lastly, if you had X, AKQXXXX, AX, XXX, you would totally prefer 4♥ over 5♣ as a contract. So, I disagree with you on that one Cyber, I don't think it shows club shortness. But, I do think the hand that bids 4♥ will often have club shortness. I don't think this bid definitively promises nor denies clubs, it just says, I have good hearts and this contract is better.

Not sure what more South wants to bid spades... You're not going to get a much better hand in this sequence. Pretty automatic.

North not doubling 3D is just sinful. That hand is better than most 20 HCP hands.

You definitely are not required to bid 1♠. Furthermore, while some might disagree, most experts would say that it is correct to bid a 5 card minor with game forcing values over the 4 card spade suit. I take it that one of your opponents did something like make a really stupid 3♠ bid with a 5-card spade suit and went down a ton? I can already imagine the explanation to the director about how they "only did it because I thought that responder denied spades on the auction"...

Your mistake was not opening 3♥! 😂

Under the assumption that the double shows 4+♠, and that you'd never want to play spades now. 2♠ is seemingly a cue-bid in support of clubs. Why 2♠ as opposed to 2♥? I mean, that depends on your agreements, but maybe the robots are programmed to use the most expensive cue-bid possible without passing the suit they are supporting? Perhaps it was showing the spades stoppers that it held. It's an imperfect bid, showing the strength, but you surely must know you're annihilating 2NT here. You should double. I guess it didn't bid 2NT due to the diamond shortness. But, that's really the bid that best describes the hand in that situation, other than maybe redouble?

I mean, I'm not really sure what the question is here? There are no real choices here for declarer other than dropping the Q♥ under the A/K♥. If defenders break clubs before you establish a pitch on the diamonds/hearts, or if opponents find their ruffs, you're down. This is all on the defense? Or is that what you're asking? Seems kind of straight forward, you encourage the heart continuation, get your ruff, and if your partner had any opportunity to show you suit preference, you lead it... Is your partner ever going to show you a club preference over diamonds here? Probably not. You'll take 4 tricks. If you find a miraculous club switch at Trick 4 after taking your ruff, and lead any club from KJXX with the A♣ on your right. You'll take 5.

There are pretty much only two lines worth considering: A♥, Q♥, Finesse the J♥. Which only wins if the K♦ is doubleton in West or singleton. (1/2 of 3-3 breaks) or (2/3 of 4-2 breaks) in ♥ AND (2/7 of 1/2 of 5-2 breaks) or (all 6-1 breaks) in ♦. Notice the AND. A♥, Q♥ overtaken by the K♥. Which only wins if the J♥ is doubleton in either hand and the ♦ finesse works. (1/3 of 4-2 breaks) in ♥ AND (6/7 of 1/2 of 6-1 breaks) or (1/2 of 5-2 breaks) or (1/2 of 4-3 breaks) in ♦. Notice that if you play A♥ and 3♥ intending to put in the T♥, You can't do this planning to overtake the Q♥ later. If opponent rises with the J♥ in the second round of hearts the suit blocks. Down 1. If you want to crunch the numbers you can, but it's really the only line of play. Anything else is honestly kind of silly.

I personally play a 10-12 NT, and if there is one auction I'm never worried about it's 1NT-X where X is for penalty. Good pairs have effective run-out systems and I feel that more often than not double just serves as a mechanism to improve the contract. I think the reason that a penalty double hasn't shown itself to be effective against our 10-12 NT is because people are downgrading the quality of the hand necessary to penalize at the one level. It's not really penalty, it's general takeout and optional penalty. But, when you play a pair that has a run-out system, they will never play 1NTx if they don't want to, and in fact, in our system we can't play 1NTx, only 1NTxx. So, I have two comments on how to combat it, that I won't claim are necessarily best.... I never play against it sadly. But, it's okay to play the same systems you already do - not necessarily ideal but, okay. I wouldn't downgrade my criteria for a penalty double, that bid needs to have integrity, when opponents run you can't find yourself disliking your hand, and partner needs to be able to penalize. Although, I don't play penalty doubles, they're not frequent enough to justify in my mind. What I would personally do is overcall with both less points or distribution. There's no particular reason to be scared to compete over a completely average hand without shape. 4-4 shape is completely fine. You'll take some losses playing this way, but on average, you'll get a much better result. At least I hope so.

Well, you probably have to overtake the Q♥. I mean, how else do you take two diamond hooks? Hoping for a doubleton K♦ is sadly smaller odds than a doubleton J♥, so we depressingly play A♥, Q♥ overtaken by the K♥, pray for the jack to fall, take the diamond hook, and cross in hearts again. Cashing the hearts and claiming the good tricks in dummy. This hand has a major entry problem. You can't afford to lose another trick, so... What else can you do? There isn't a third club trick coming. 4♥, 3♦, 2♣, or you're just never making.

This decision is always going to be made by combining multiple considerations. If it is Swiss Teams, the state of the match could be a consideration, the vulnerability, whether partner's pass was a forcing pass and thus whether it shows some ability to defend 4♠. Was 3♥ weak? If so, what is our agreement on that pass? Does it show no ability to defend, but, partner is checking back with me instead of unilaterally bidding at the 5-level when his/her hand is described? Ultimately, it's just going to come down to partner's tendencies, what kind of hand I should expect here, and most importantly as others have mentioned, the 13 cards that I am holding. No one here can give you much more than very vague commentary without sample hands to be more instructive with... Hope it helps.

I'm glad you brought this up, because many people do not understand this. Transfers, for example, are played for two major reasons. 1: The transfer is forcing, and allows responder to better engineer an auction based on their strength/shape 2: It preserves the lead going through the usually weaker hand, and into the stronger hand, creating some possible finesses. Transfers are primarily played because of reason #1, not reason #2. It's much harder to defend when the 1NT opener is in dummy, because there is much more uncertainty about what the declarer holds. How many times have we all wondered if it's safe to cash our King in a side suit? We really need our partner to lead it, but we're on lead, and unsure if we'll regain it in time to defeat the contract... So we lead our King in the 2nd round of a suit where dummy still holds QJX, ruff, and two tricks promote without a loser, when the ruffing finesse fails and you hold enough length to guard the suit... These sort of uncertainties just aren't as common when you can see the only hand that **could** be distributional face up on the table. Good point!

I didn't claim that it "must", I'm just saying, if you had 4-5♥ and your opponent bid natural ♥... You'd certainly love to be able to penalize in this sequence. Many agree to play 5-card major common in 1NT openers, especially in North America. Some people like to thread the needle and try to find some speculative 17-8 HCP fits that make game and bid stayman, it's true, which is why I used the tilde (~) to say approximately 24+. I understand that you two were just completing the answer, but I don't see how Garbage Stayman bids change anything here, that's just even more reason to not bid. I think this is even more reason not to force your partner to bid with a double that doesn't describe anything useful. I do think we're all on the same page though.

I think your partner is correct here. You've established ~24+ HCP on this auction already. And your hand is pretty well described as balanced. If you're holding 2♠ and 4♥, you'd want to be able to double for penalty right? What about 5♥? Your double essentially meant, "Hey partner, bid spades when it's right, and let's defend 2♥x when it's right." You know what says this much more effectively? Pass. Honestly, your interpretation of double is kind of useless, it's never going to help, also what does your pass mean now? Your partner will never let the opponents play 2♥ undoubled. That's for sure. Your partner will never pass. Your bids over interference in this sequence should describe your hand, and when you don't have a useful bid, you should pass and let partner make the judgement here. Your partner can have so many different hands. You could be cold for slam, your partner could have 5-4 in the majors. Your partner could have 4♠ and a heart void. You need to help them evaluate their hand. Bidding says you'd prefer to play the hand and have meaningful length in the bid suit. Doubling says that defending this contract is a great idea opposite the hand you expect partner to have, 4 spades and 9-10 HCP. Passing says you have none of these things, and that your hand is pretty much as described, your partner will get the hand right.

Mikeh is hitting on some points that I think more people need to appreciate about playing SAYC or 2/1. There are just some shapes/sequences that just have no consistently effective way to pattern out. You have to be flexible with your evaluation of your hand, and it's also good to have some improved agreements. I really would like to see people playing systems that more accurately patterned their hands out and actually catered to frequency. This is where I plug the Baby NT, it's 10-12... :) <--- The most frequent hand in bridge. Seriously though, HardVector and potentially others, if you really think that agreements/approaches like the one you suggest fully solve your problems here, I suggest that you don't really understand the system you are playing. Every system has some hands that you're going to take some losses on, and unless you've really refined your agreements here, you're just going to find some sub-optimal scores on hands like these.

There could be so many reasons why Taiwan was successful. Was precision just better? I don't personally believe it for a second. Was it because they didn't play precision as well? Did the Blue Team just decline as players as they aged? I'm not the greatest scholar on bridge history, so I won't state with any authority. I just think we should be skeptical of claims suggesting that Canape fell off a cliff. The best team to ever play it was in fact paid to move away from it, and never had success on the same scale again. 5-card majors have been adopted in recent years without much analytical consideration. They're just not as good as purported. People make the argument that "everyone plays it, so it must be better" here in North America. I literally had someone who won a NABC pairs event tell me something to the effect that, "4-card majors are a relic of the past and there's a reason everyone plays 5-card majors". As soon as you ask for the reasons why. I mean, 5-card majors are great, when you're dealt 5-card majors. And they're still okay when you're not. You'll get dealt a lot of hands with 5-card majors... But, whether they're better.... They may be marginally worse. Either way.... I just hate them with a strong club. Systems with fundamental flaws are a bad foundation to make new agreements upon... You're always stuck with those flaws.

Haha fair enough, I wasn't claiming that these were the Blue Team agreements for Canape, just that we play a system that is inspired by some of their agreements. It works well in my opinion, I'd encourage others to try and judge for themselves. Regarding my statement on balancing, it's just so obvious when you're in a two-suited auction. We also play a Baby NT (10-12), so often you're protected either way. A legit two-suiter or a "strong" NT is opposite you.

I reject the notion that Canape declined. The Blue Team only won like what? 13 championships? Were they in a row? I know there was a cheating controversy, but that was literally the new pair that was added after the regular pair that was present for the first 12 left the team. The only reason they stopped playing the Blue Team Club is because they were paid to play Precision (a truly horrible system). Consequently, they never won a championship again... Not surprising... 5-card majors and a strong club is such an inconsistent set of agreements. It's great when you get dealt 5-card majors... 5-card majors are obviously better when you get dealt 5-card majors all the time. It's just not frequent enough to clearly claim they are better, and certainly not frequent enough to undertake the difficulties of 5-card majors with an artificial 1♣ opening bid. Also, I don't think you understand Canape very well. So, I'd really slow down on asserting any correctness in your opinion on it. I think you're being very inflexible with your understanding of Canape, for example, here are my agreements with partner. 1♦-P-1♠-P-2♠ = at least 4♠, at least 4♦. If more than 4♠, ♠ > ♦. Weaker than a 3♠ raise. 1♦-P-1♥-P-1♠ = at least 4♠, at least 4♦. If more than 4♠, ♠ > ♦. It says nothing about strength. 90% forcing-ish... But I'm limited in strength by not opening 1♣. 1♦-P-1♥-P-2♠ = 6♠ (so rarely is it ever more), exactly 4♦. I had a 1♠ bid available, so partner would prefer that given my definition of the sequence above, I should be even longer in ♠, not stronger. 1♠-P-1NT-P-2♦ = At least 4♠, at least 5♦ #♠ <= #♦. Partner should raise ♠ with a hand that is 3541 for example. 1NT is not forcing, and certainly shouldn't be bid with a hand that doesn't want to play NT. Opener will hold something in the range of 4.65-->4.70 ♥/♠ on the average 1♥/♠ opener.. There is just no problem here, as long as you're aware that you've agreed to raise with 3-card support sometimes. 1♠-P-1NT-P-3♦ = Some 6-5 (or better) in the two suits, not a maximum. 1♦-P-1♥/1NT-P-3♠ = Some 6-5 (or better) in the two suits, maximum. 2♦ opener = 5-6 ♦. 4♣ 2♥ opener = 5-6 ♥. 4♣ 2♠ opener = 5-6 ♠. 4♣ We've just never had a problem patterning out. If your partner is remotely competent at balancing when you have to take a pass with a concealed 5-card suit, you're just fine. When opponents preempt with a long suit, your opening hand almost always tends to be two-suited. There are so many inferences that can be taken in Canape auctions, and knowing how to properly handle competition is required, but also not difficult.

It just depends on the system that you are playing. In 2/1, yeah, that's a pretty gross hand. However, the problem here is not the fact that South opened. Why North would think that their hand is worth anything more than a simple 2♠ raise is beyond me, and why they think it's then worth a further invite after already over-representing it with the 2♥ bid, I could understand raising 4♠ over some other forcing/invitational bid by South, but over a 2♠ reply it's an easy pass. And there was a similar level of lunacy from the South hand in the 2nd auction. To suggest this has anything to do with the opening bid of 1♠ is insane though. That's just extremely poor communication/hand evaluation in the later rounds of the auction. This hand should have stopped at 2♠ and competed to 3♠ (which makes) on any line by West that doesn't start A♠ and out a ♠.

A heart comes at Trick 3, are you ducking to the Q♥? You're never doing that. Win the Ace, and now what? 4-0 trump break kills you. West lead their 5th best ♦ and wins the 2nd round of diamonds giving East a trump promotion/over ruff, the ♦ lead was made because West was holding the K♥ (per your agreements) and a void in ♠. Your line of play can certainly be right, it's a good line of play if you believe that ♦ are breaking 6-1, the question is whether it's the correct to play for the 6-1 diamond break given what you know. Without revealing anything about the hand, I did look it up yesterday, and I was kind of disappointed to see that the OP recorded the hand wrong, North has 5 hearts and 4 clubs, which is not an insignificant difference. My line of play is certainly horrible when I have to hope and pray for hearts to break 3-3. The whole point of the line of play was to cater to the singleton ♦ lead that you suggested could be the case, but not to sell out to it... But not for these horrible odds. I think we should really start to consider the result at the other table here, this is a pretty easy 6♠ to find. The last thing you want to do is go -1030 or -1530 on this board. After we've heard about our opponents' lead agreements, we've got a choice. Do we think that opposing declarer played for a singleton diamond here? Are we just chasing ghosts? It looks like an honest lead. If you had a completely unsupported QJ, you basically need partner to hold the K or T. If you bring home a minus here and your teammates ask you whether you ruffed high or low, and you then tell them that you exited a small diamond at trick two.... They're not going to be happy with you, and rightfully so. Sometimes, you're supposed to pay to 6-1 breaks. I'm not sure if this is such a hand, but, it's worth considering.

That seems significantly more likely to go wrong than my suggested line? Where is your heart loser going on a 4-0 break? You can't get rid of it on the A♣, because it just turns into a diamond loser? EDIT: I'm sorry, this is just wrong. You MIGHT have a natural trump loser, but you won't have a diamond loser in your line, that much is true. Still seems like a low percentage play that you'd only take if someone was asking you this question in this forum.

I'll echo what Cyberyeti has to say on this, we're playing to make 6, not 7. First thing I'm asking is what leads my opponents play, could easily be 3rd/5th, which tells me that I should be ruffing high on the 3rd round of diamonds. Making 6 on any non 4-0 break. If I wanted to play for 7 anyways. The best line of play is probably to cash the A♥ and then exit a heart towards the Q♥. If this works, and Cyberyeti is right, well West can't give himself a diamond ruff. This would also establish 2 discards of your losing diamonds through the Q♥ and A♣ and allow you to collect every trump break. If this fails, well, you take the same line of play for a diamond ruff and discarding your 4th diamond on the A♣, you've lost your chance at making 7 sometimes, in exchange for a clearly superior line of play at teams. If this fails AND Cyberyeti is right, and West gets a diamond ruff, I fail to see the line of play that will succeed here. It's just always going down? Unless West has exactly 1 spade? Seems like a low percentage lie to play for. I may well be wrong? Feedback would be appreciated.

I followed up with partner on this hand, he says that he would bid 4NT over 4H in the provided auction. Followed by 5NT, which is also sufficient to find 7D. Just thought you should know.

I considered this, I guess I should have added commentary on it, it's a fair point. This grand would be a trivial find for us if South was allowed to open, but there are inferences necessary to find it when North opens. I think that both of the proposed hands really strongly want to bid 1430 missing the meaningful keycards and nothing much else, almost as soon as a slam try has been made with the 3S cuebid. The absence of such a bid suggests that ♦ keycards are not a problem. Partner's 5♣ cuebid really just must show the A♦. So, as soon as 5NT hits the table, I really think with the K♦ and the stiff ♣, it's just not a decision anymore. We're in a known 10 card fit.

1♠ 10-16 HCP 4+♠ 2♦ GF, 4+♦ 3♦ 5+♦ support. 3♠ A♠ 4♥ A♥ 5♣ A♣ 5♠ K♠ 5NT Try for grand I have a choice here... Do I want to bid 6♣ so partner can have the satisfaction of slamming 7♦ on the table? Or do I want to bid it myself?