AL78

I was thinking of merely taking the double finesse then cashing the ace if the nine does not appear. This makes four tricks if East has a void, singleton nine, 9x or 9xx. I guess RHO might try and peter with 9xx to try and induce a failing third round finesse.

Playing the ten has to be the correct play as it allows you to play the suit for no losers on most layouts where West holds both missing honors. If it failed badly on this hand, move on. I've had sessions where I repeatedly have a choice of plays and like guided radar head for the wrong one on the layout, and end up with 43%.

With my Acol partners: 1♠ - 2♥ 2♠ - 4♠ Pass It will probably go the same way with my 5CM (not 2/1) partners. There is a remote possibility of a 5♣ cue after which I think we'd stop in 5♠. It's hard to be objective seeing both hands together.

Damn I put partner's hand down incorrectly, she held ♦KT42 not ♦JT42. Sorry for the confusion, there are certain times of the day I should refrain from posting hands on here.

The vacant spaces argument says LHO is more likely to have Qxx(x) over my club suit so the club suit is more likely than normal to have a loser. The ace is with LHO under the king, so on a low diamond lead putting up the king works.

2♣. I'd only respond 1♠ with 5M 4otherM if I only have one bid opposite a minimal opener.

Thanks for the responses. I thought of doubling and decided against it as I don't want to deal with a 4♠ bid from partner, so I decided to bid what I thought would have a decent chance with an assumed 6-7 HCP opposite, 3NT. On a heart lead partner put down: ♠KQJ62 ♥9 ♦JT42 ♣JT6 I made all 13 tricks when the clubs break 2-2. The diamond ace is onside so 12 tricks are cold in clubs or NT. After the weak two I think the chances of dropping the queen are less than 50% so it is not a great slam although one pair found the club slam. One was in 5♣, three were in 4♠ (one going down) and one pair didn't get past 3♣. That was worth 15/18 MPs. There is a fair randomness element in a field of mixed standard even with 10 tables. You don't make 6♠ because the spades break 5-1.

♠A8 ♥AQJ3 ♦3 ♣AK9532 MPs, no-one vuln. RHO is dealer and opens a weak 2♥. Your bid?

I think the idea of min/max Michaels is to limit the hand to either one which is suggesting a sacrifice or one which is constructively suggesting a game, and eliminating the intermediate hands where it is not clear what you are trying to achieve. Do you have a limited strength range in your two suited overcalls?

It is fine to start beginners off with minibridge but waiting a year before teaching bidding sounds excessive to me.

I held the North hand. We play Acol three weak twos and I judged the hand not enough to open 2♣. Opening 1-suit followed by 1-another suit could still be strong, up to just below a jump shift so partner is very unlikely to pass my second bid.

With all my partners a 2/1 shows a good 9+HCP.

Why 33 HCP for 6NT? That is taught as an initial guidance for beginners and can be (over)simply justified to them by pointing out it is impossible to be down off two aces (although you can be down off AK in a suit holding 33 HCP). At some point they should be taught about trick taking potential alongside not having two losers off the top. Beginners are also taught you need 37HCP for 7NT on the same basis, you cannot be off on a cashing ace, and if you have 37HCP between the hands, the grand is very likely to be on a finesse at the worst. Again the reality comes down to trick taking potential as well as controls, and methods to judge trick taking potential as the auction progresses. Partner and I bid and made 7NT on these cards recently: [hv=pc=n&s=sq85hkqj843djca92&n=sat73ha7dakqt62c4&d=w&v=0&b=8&a=p1dp1hp1sp3h(invitational)p4n(RCKB%20hearts)p5s(2KC%2BHQ)p7n(13%20tricks%20very%20likely)ppp]266|200[/hv] Only 30 combined HCP but all those small red cards are each worth a trick.

A few anecdotes/thoughts based on my 20-year experience at my local club: You cannot do this without their will. At my local club pre-pandemic we had an evening session for beginners/improvers which was a duplicate session where players could ask for advice (classed as an EBU teaching session so no masterpionts given). At one time we had a small separate parallel session which was practice bridge with no scoring, the equivalent of four people playing in someone's house. These two sessions were stepping stones from lessons to the conventional club duplicate sessions. There were times when beginners had been playing in the small parallel session for a number of months we encouraged them to move into the beginners duplicate but they didn't want too. Some of them eventually stopped coming to the club because they felt pressurised. Many years ago we had the beginners duplicate on one evening with three other open sessions on other evenings. The club has always had an excellent teaching programme and does a great job of bringing new people into the game, and the idea was the bridge evening classes fed into the beginners duplicate and beginners would move onto other sessions when they had gained confidence. What happened was beginners moved into the beginners duplicate and set up camp there forever, never moving on. The club playing area is of very limited size and can only accommodate around 12 tables comfortably. What happened is the equivalent of filling up a sink with the outlets plugged, the beginner's session filled up to maximum capacity and we ended up having to turn people away because we had run out of space. This caused some resentment and two of the improvers decided to start up an improver's duplicate on the one free evening in the club calendar (although the club policy was that it was open to anyone but it was mostly improvers who played). This worked very well and beginners did move onto that new session at least until that session became congested. Once capacity had been reached some of the improvers became resentful of the more experienced players who played on that evening (maybe two or three pairs) taking the attitude that they shouldn't be playing because it was primarily an improver's evening, and this sparked off a 'them and us' attitude. During and after the pandemic, the club calendar had been thrown into the air with online bridge through the pandemic and a slow return to some F2F bridge over the last couple of years. A consequence of adapting the club calendar to a post-pandemic new normal is that the distinction between sessions for experienced and less experienced players has all but gone, and whilst there maybe one or two sessions which are primarily attended by beginners, most sessions are a melting pot of experienced and inexperienced players, with attendance at any one session much lower than it was in the past. This has the effect of increasing the randomness of the open duplicate sessions (from my perspective the quality of bridge at the club in terms of gameplay satisfaction has declined significantly over the last 10-15 years) and antagonising a small minority of improvers who resent "their" session disappearing and them now having to play amongst the experienced players (and one or two of those have stopped playing). What I have learnt from all this is people develop comfort zones and are extremely resistant to moving out of them. Moving out of a comfort zone is what helps you to progress as a person. Inexperienced players like to play bridge amongst their peers/friends and treat the open sessions with an attitude of almost fear, which I suspect means they don't want to get repeatedly hammered and finish last, although there have been very occasional reports of rude/antagonistic behaviour which doesn't help. Once these comfort zones are established, some seem to take on tribalistic attitudes and form a mild hostility to those they see as belonging to another tribe encroaching on their space. In summary, the club seems to have or did have an ideal setup of classes for newcomers --> beginner's duplicate --> improver's duplicate --> open duplicate for people to climb the bridge ladder. The reality is the majority of people don't climb the ladder all the way or even much of the way, and a significant subset aren't interested in the competitive element and instead play for the social aspect. What we end up with is few beginners ever making it to club intermediate level (by that I mean able to be competitive in an open session if not necessarily winning frequently) and many have become permanent beginners, always turning up for that one session or playing in a weaker open session with their peers and that's it. There is one lady who has been playing in the beginners/improvers duplicate for a good 20 years, and whilst I have been involved in assisting on that evening over the last 15 years, she has never advanced beyond a beginner.

I much prefer IMPS as I find it irritating the dilemma of whether to bid 4M or 3NT for the sake of an extra 10 points, getting fixed by the field, and I like the idea of looking for safety plays to make the contract or picturing the only layout to get a contract down and playing for it, even if it costs overtricks when the layout doesn't materialise.

Doesn't that end up wrongsiding a NT contract in some cases?

You have to start somewhere with beginners, and that somewhere is the fundamentals of the system and the logic/structure of the system. Once that has been taught and they've had some practice at bidding, the scoring and strategy at MPs comes in. One problem at my club is beginners are taught fundamentals of Acol weak NT and card play, and the most basic parts of competitive bidding, but most of the latter is untouched and they sort of find it out as they go along. What happens is we have a lot of beginners who take years to work out how to use takeout doubles, cue bids and how to deal with overcalls and pre-empts, and most of them still don't bid properly in competition.

Sorry, miscounted, you always have eight on top and a ninth on a diamond lead.

I have decided to post the full deal so you can see what I had and what happened. Cyberyeti was very close to estimating my hand: [hv=pc=n&s=s865hqt843dj75cj5&w=sq74hak65dk6ct962&n=sjthj7daqt982c843&e=sak932h92d43cakq7&d=e&v=e&b=6&a=1sp2c2d3dp3sp4sppp]399|300[/hv] Without the interference I would have bid 2NT showing 15-16 bal/semi-bal but can't do that without a diamond stop. 3♣ would have been non-forcing. I thus decided to cue bid firstly to establish a game force and secondly to ask partner for any further information to assist in deciding which game. If she takes it as a good hand with club support I am fine with that, otherwise it has to be forcing and asking for more information. The problem is she has one bid available and two pieces of information to show (a diamond stop and three card spade support). She decided to show her spades so I bid the spade game and after a diamond lead made 11 tricks. This was worth 6/18 MPs in a field of 10.5 tables as four other pairs bid and made 3NTW+3 on a diamond lead. Partner was disappointed we ended up in the wrong game and I tried to console her by saying the optimal piece of information to show is not obvious and it was not unreasonable to play in the spade game. With one diamond stop 3NT would have gone down and 4♠ would have made 10 tricks if the spades had broken 4-1.

We haven't discussed that situation (sorry, we only play together once a month at most and my partner has been on vacation for the previous five weeks), but I would probably have something like a 5413 shape.

No it couldn't be a semi-splinter, we don't have that agreement. I was the one bidding 3♦ and I'll give a bit of time for others to put forward an opinion if they wish but it was the only reasonable forcing action I could think of at the time.

MPs, playing Benj Acol weak NT: [hv=pc=n&w=sq74hak65dk6ct962&d=e&v=e&b=6&a=1sp2c2d3dp]133|200[/hv] Do you show the three card spade support or the diamond stop?

You are probably right but you have seen one or two hands I've posted with a partner who thinks 4♦ is invitational in situations like this. :D

I'd be inclined to think the lead is a singleton and I am going to lose the first two tricks. Happened once in a teams game when LHO led a diamond after I had shown five in the auction and dummy came down with three, which motivated me to take a very deep finesse later in the play (I was right about the layout).

Looks like a 30 point pack situation on the assumption South's bidding at this vulnerability is not garbage. 4♣ showing diamond support with slam interest.