AL78

MPs, Acol weak NT: [hv=pc=n&n=sakj9hadkt54ckt43&d=n&v=b&b=13&a=1d1h2c3h]133|200[/hv] Over to you.

I wasn't necessarily thinking of my hand as a strong NT, the reasons for my bids were: 1. I have a strong hand with a long suit opposite opener and if I respond 1♠ I may have a problem as to what to do if partner 2m. I therefore decided to get the suit and the strength off my chest immediately. 2. When partner makes the weakest bid possible over my 2♠ I thought that 3NT should show a semi-balanced strong hand with values in the unbid suits. It has been pointed out that partner almost certainly has a six card suit as they have other options with only five, so I could have cue bid instead, although there is a danger of confusing partner with that route.

[hv=pc=n&n=sa3hakt8dkj86ck94&e=sk8h432dqt543cj63&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=pp1dp1sp2hp2np3nppp]266|200[/hv] Partner leads the ♥6 which is run to declarer's queen. Declarer plays the spade ace, cashes a top heart discarding a low club then plays a spade to your king, partner playing the five and the seven. What do you play?

MPs, Acol weak NT: [hv=pc=n&w=st9ha86dakt942c83&e=sak7654hk75d63cak&d=w&v=n&b=12&a=1dp2s(strong)p3dp3nppp]266|200[/hv] Slams are makable in diamonds, spades and NT thanks to an extremely favourable layout (doubleton ♠QJ and ♦QJ8 with South). Is there a way to find one of them within the limitations of Acol?

Welcome to my world, although a couple of weeks ago at the local club I for once was aligned with the hand bias (my average HCP was 12.62) and partner and I between us declared 15/21 boards. Clustering is a feature of randomness and if someone tries to create a random sequence themself and it is compared to a genuine random sequence, it is possible to tell which is which because the human generated random sequence will have far less clustering. I have tried in the past analysing my average HCP and frequency of declaring/defending and over a large number of sessions, my average HCP is very close to 10 but there are clusters of below average HCP sessions, which at the time makes it look like a bias in the dealing. It is only my defending frequency that is well in excess of what would be expected and I am still working on why that is the case.

I'm only accustomed to playing low to mediocre quality club bridge and I agree that hands that look boring from the auction are often not during the play. At MPs you have to work out what is going on and concentrate throughout to avoid blowing a trick through a lead into a tenace or a careless discard setting up a suit in declarer's hand. I have got better at that over the years but there do exist hands which I class as boring. The classic example is at the end of the second round having defended on five of the first six boards, the opponents bid to 3NT which is the fourth game their way, I think about the lead having worked out partner's strength and when dummy comes down am glad I found a decent or even the best lead. Declarer proceeds to cash 10 tricks off the top and we get a bad score because two of the other five pairs didn't bother bidding it. After a couple more of those types of hands I start to wonder why I bothered to turn up (then I remember it is for the pleasure of my partner's company not the quality of the bridge).

I thought that was the classical way of playing the Multi, weak 2M, strong 2m or strong balanced.

Looks like a good hand to swing the axe.

It won't be a problem for them if the defender with the ace is on lead, which is 50/50.

I reckon some of them aren't confident on which bids are forcing and which are not, so are scared of the auction dying in a silly place. Jumping must convey strength and thus be forcing. This is especially an issue with beginners. With the overbidding of strong hands and underbidding of weak hands, some partnership's auctions are analagous to Yosemite Sam and the camel:

If you are playing a weak NT why does North not bid 2NT at his second turn which I would think shows a strong NT hand? I don't understand 2♦ but then I am not familiar with 2/1 GF.

No, in Acol it is showing enough to respond but a limited point count (usually 5/6-9), unable to show a suit at the one level and not strong enough to bid 2/1. Responder doesn't want to pass in case opener is maximum where game might be on so 1NT is used as the I-have-limited-values-but-nothing-to-bid call, sometimes called the dustbin bid.

I wouldn't call hands like that "interesting", I just find it irritating to be punished for an opponent's blunder (it's bad enough being punished for my own blunders). Unlike many at my club I don't find hands that have high distribution interesting just because they have high distribution and it is a guessing game how high to bid and an element of luck who you are against. I find hands interesting that have an instructive element about them, such as deducing a winning line through subtle inferences I didn't pick up at the time, or where more sophisticated defensive signals would have guided me to the killing defence.

The objective of the competition is to give the inexperienced players a go with an experienced partner and learn something, for example if the inexperienced player misbids or misplays and the experienced partner can give advice/explanation. That can't happen very effectively if the inexperienced player is picking up so much dross they spend most of the evening passing and following suit and the experienced player gets most of the decisions, and the objective of the competition gets called into question. In my case I still think I'm generating my own bad luck much of the time and people on here are being kind to me when I post a hand of woe, so my hangups are about my performance with what I get dealt as much as what I get dealt.

My thoughts: 1. Strength and variance in standard of the field. If you get the flat boards against the weak players and the technical BridgeMaster level 4 style hands against the strongest pairs, you will find it much more difficult to get a good score at the end. 2. Wrong pair wrong time or vice versa. Somewhat related to 1. above. You get the pair of beginners who don't play reverses and finish in the only making partscore their way that is impossible to reach by the other pairs, BOTTOM. You get the only pair that bids the cold slam against you, BOTTOM. The opposition overbid to a game going off on a trivial defence, TOP. You make an overtrick because the opponents carved the defence, TOP. 3. Hands that work/don't work with your system. You are playing strong NT in a field playing weak NT. You can end up rightsiding or wrongsiding NT contracts giving you a top or a bottom. Playing a strong NT, you have to open 1m on weak NT hands allowing LHO in with a 1M overcall which they couldn't do if you opened a weak NT. They therefore find their major suit part score for a top whilst everyone else goes peacefully one down in 1NT. 4. If you are directing and get called in the middle of a hand, you can lose focus which might be costly if it was a difficult hand. 5. The erratic players/gamblers who punt games which make on a lucky layout or throw poor hyper-aggressive overcalls at you which disrupt your bidding but you cannot punish them, which doesn't happen at the other tables. 6. Hand biases. You play 24 boards and declare twice, defend 18 times. Defence is harder that declaring and having to concentrate on nearly every board takes its toll, especially if you have had an early start and a full days work before playing in the evening. It also means when you are going pass pass pass follow suit follow suit much of the time because you keep picking up flat single digit point counts you are more reliant on exploiting the opponent's mistakes than generating good results from solid declarer play. 7. Best play sometimes fails and bad plays sometimes work on a particular layout. You have a 10 card trump fit missing the queen and the ace and king are in seperate hands. You cash the wrong honor first when they are 3-0, other people don't. You are in a 9 card fit after RHO opened with a pre-empt and you have to pick up the queen. You decide to play LHO for the queen on the principle of vacant spaces and finesse the second round into RHO's Qx. Other declarers blindly follow eight ever nine never and make one more trick than you. Bridge is a probabilistic game and the best you can do is take a line that is most likely to work best, not the line that is guaranteed to work on every deal. 8. Human error. doesn't matter how much is going your way if you or partner forgets a critical part of the system at the wrong time, or partner didn't give you a ruff because they lost concentration, or you butchered the defence or declarer play because you weren't concentrating/missed some critical information/opponents are erratic and don't have the hand they held in the auction. Related to your last point, we had a situation last year in a competition where a beginner/improver plays with an experienced player and the trophy is awarded to the winning beginner/improver. What happened was there was a big bias in the hands (despite random dealing) which resulted in the experienced players declaring nearly all the time (I think one beginner claimed they declared twice in 24 boards or something like that). This was somewhat disillusioning for the beginners, and it prompted a discussion at the competitions sub-committee meeting that in future, anyone dealing boards for that competition should check the deal and reject large biases that put the cards one way or another i.e. the hands should be equable.

One other pair also went down in 6♥ after a more crash bang wallop auction (South went straight into Blackwood I think). I still should have put the brakes on the auction.

Fair enough, I had it in my mind that showing a control below game level didn't show extras, so yes I should have dampened any slam aspirations by bidding 4♥. I am really rusty on some aspects of slam bidding because it hardly ever comes up.

MPs, Acol (I was North): [hv=pc=n&s=s2hajt42dkj2caq98&n=skj63hk9863dac753&d=n&v=b&b=13&a=1hp3sp4dp4np5hp6hppp]266|200[/hv] I won the diamond lead and played a heart to the ace with West showing out, so that was one down when the club finesse worked. The slam is not good but is it reasonable for South to take a shot or was it asking a bit much? The problem is the hands don't mesh very well and the 3-0 break in the wrong direction (typical I cash the wrong honor first) kills it immediately.

This is an example of where I misdefend given two options and choosing the wrong one. I decided that partner almost certainly had led a singleton but thought about cashing the diamond ace first and observing partner's signal. Had I done that, he would have encouraged with a high spot card and we would have cashed our diamond tricks. Instead I came up with the fantasy that I lead a low club for partner to ruff, he returns a diamond and I give him a second ruff. That might have been a good try at IMPS but maybe a too narrow target to aim for at MPs.

I don't do that myself even when playing with a beginner. I believe in playing down the middle and bidding in a consistent way so that my partner can get a feel for my bidding style. This may make me easy to play against as opposed to an erratic player where you can blow the defence because your deduction on the best line fails because what they have is inconsistent with the auction, but I'll accept that.

I have only played with this partner once before so don't have a feeling for his strength. Unfortunately this session, like the session the previous week, had a hand bias the other way so defending a lot was unavoidable.

True, I suspect that is what happened at some other tables. We'll never know what our opponents would have done over 5♦.

MikeH provides a good analysis as always and again I didn't think it out to that depth, but I played partner for a singleton club and proceeded to get a bottom when the club layout turned out to be as follows: [hv=pc=n&s=s543ht54dkt84cqt7&w=sq986hqd7653cakj8&n=sat7hkjdaqjc96432&e=skj2ha987632d92c5&d=w&v=b&b=4&a=1c1n2hppp]399|300[/hv] I'm looking at this again, maybe she put a top honor up instead of the jack, the latter is completely crazy. What happened was I got in with a trump and played partner for a singleton club so led one hoping to give partner a ruff and instead gave declarer two diamond discards. Sorry my post-session memory is very hazy at times.

I asked North what she understood by the 2♠ bid and she said "strong", although that was inconsistent with my hand and partner's double. It turned out South had a misunderstanding of what "strong" means in this context so that's the end of it. This is what can happen when you play against beginners/improvers, it can be like playing against a pair that psyches on every other board. It didn't make any difference to the overall result.

One down is the best EW can do.