AL78

I have met plenty of club players who are not beginners and TOX just to show an opening hand, so it is more widespread than you think.

I would only bid 2♥ and miss a game that happens to make because both hands are stacked with honor cards in the red suits and have shortages opposite black suit junk. Replace the stiff ♠K with a spot card and game is still cold, but I doubt as many will be jump raising hearts. Switch one of North's spades for a club and game has no chance. I'd be interested to know the odds of North holding a hand where game is at least 40% and can't move over a simple raise by opener.

Perhaps this should be in the "Cheating at bridge" thread.

I'm not convinced anyone is to blame for missing the slam. From both sides it looks like the hands don't fit well outside the club suit but it just happens West has the top three spade honors for his 3NT bid which allows three losers to be dumped. Maybe East is worth another nudge with 4♣ showing slam interest but then West signs off in 4NT and probably goes one down when the defence cash four diamond tricks. Minor slams can be hard to find at MPs through fear of ending up in 5m when 3NT is cold for overtricks.

I'd probably bid 3♣, although I'm not sure if my hand is good enough to force to game, but that depends on what your minimum requirement is for a reverse. Some of my partners reverse on 16 counts which means I would be tempted to bid 2NT Lebensohl (although with an A and a K it looks a bit too good for that), then pass if partner cannot do anything other than bid 3♣ (i.e. denying a good reverse hand). It is tricky because if partner is 4-6 in the minors and their HCP are stacked in those suits, we could easily make 5♣, but if they are 2245 or 3145 without a spade stop and ♥Qx and minimum for the reverse, it might just be a partscore hand.

In Acol a 2/1 bid, whether disturbed or not, is forcing for one round, not game forcing.

Thanks for the responses. I posted it wondering if anyone would have bid NT with my hand based on protecting the club tenace from the opening lead. I did consider bidding 3NT despite the spade fit for that reason and because I am a better card player, but the purpose of playing with this partner is to give her a game with a competant intermediate. One of her monthly partners is rather poor, and when I look at her online scorecard I can see many of the bad scores are due to her partner either butchering the bidding or card play, so my aim is to fuel her enthusiasm and help her improve. To do this I am not going to bid differently to how I bid with an experienced partner (except where she will likely not understand a bid), so I am not going to try hogging the hand in an attempt to declare on the basis I can play the cards better. Despite me only declaring three out of 24 boards, we finished 4th out of 8 with a little over 54% which I pointed out was a good result in a mixed field and with the opponents getting most of the hands. I have recommended she has a go at the BridgeMaster hands starting at beginner level.

I dind't think of 3♣ at the time, was trying to engineer a way of finding out if 3NT or 4♥ by me was viable, I'm not sure if she would have understood what I was asking with the cue bid. I bid a direct 4♠ reluctantly knowing the club lead was coming through my holding. She unfortunately went two off although I think she misplayed it. [hv=pc=n&s=s5h96432dat84c852&w=sj64hakqt5d96caqt&n=sakth87dj32ckj943&e=sq98732hjdkq75c76&d=e&v=n&b=2&a=pp1h2c2sp4sppp]399|300[/hv] She went up with the club ace at trick one and played three rounds of hearts, pitching a club and a diamond when North ruffed low. She ended up losing a couple of diamonds along with the top spades. I think she should have either not played a third round of hearts or overruffed then try to engineer a diamond ruff or two. I think it should be possible to hold the losers to just two spades and a diamond. One pair was in 3♠+1 and the other pair was in 2NT+2. A four table movement makes the scores almost meaningless.

[hv=pc=n&w=sj64hakqt5d96caqt&d=e&v=n&b=2&a=pp1h2c2sp]133|200[/hv] MPs, playing with an inexperienced (but not beginner) player. System is Acol with 3 weak twos, weak NT, little in the way of conventions. Would you bid the spade game or 3NT here, or something else (if so, what)?

Oops, what did your partner have to say about it?

I asked her why she ducked and she couldn't answer, so I don't think they were of a standard where they are familiar with plays like that.

Yes, good point.

Someone once pulled that coup against me. I had ♥AKJTxx in dummy with no side entries, ♥xx in hand, I was in a spade contract. I took the finesse which held, came back to hand, and took the finesse again, which lost. RHO had ducked holding ♥Qxx. Suckered!!

This hand is about counting opener's distribution by cashing diamonds after drawing trumps to deduce their minor suit length. The instructive point is that when East (after opening 2♥ and showing up with three spades) discards a heart on the third round of diamonds, their distribution is 3622. Dummy holds ♣KTx and declarer holds ♣Axx, so when declarer cashes the ace and a club honor falls from opener on the right, they are to deduce that they hold QJ doubleton and the correct play is to cash the king, felling the second missing honor card, promoting the ten to the tenth trick. My question is, if RHO is a world class player, could they possibly drop the jack or queen from Hx which would guide declarer into the losing line if they played as BridgeMaster advocates?

Put me down for 4♥ as well.

If the spade king comes down from East under the ace, you can unblock the diamonds and cross to dummy with a spade.

I would put the king up. If West has the ♥A, you cannot stop him winning and giving East another ruff, and you still have a club loser. If East only started with one spade and cannot get another ruff, you have a spade loser and the contract is still hopeless. Therefore I hope East has the ace and started with three small spades or K2, and I can get in with the ♥K and play the spade ace crashing the king. I hope to make five spade tricks, one heart trick, three diamond tricks and a heart ruff or the club king, which I know is a long shot but it is the only way I can see to give myself a chance of making. I could of course be reading this problem completely wrong and the objective is not to take desperate measures to make, but to minimise the number of -100's I concede.

This is the standard for a non-novice session of duplicate bridge across the UK. A session will typically play 24 boards in 3 hours, which equates to 15 minutes per two board round, 22 minutes per three board round, or 7 minutes per board plus some time to allow for movement of pairs. Bridge is a timed game and it is part of the game that a certain number of boards will be played in a fixed time. As for where this standard came from I don't know, but it seems to be the standard on BBO as well, so it may be an international convention that has developed over time that all countries have converged too. Where it came from is irrelevant, the important thing is that it exists, and that is the speed at which you are expected to play.

As someone who plays a strong NT in the UK where most play weak NT, these sort of bottoms come up every now and then. Other classics include wrong siding the contract, or opening a suit on a weak NT hand allows the opponents to overcall on a hand they would not over a 1NT opening. You have to take it on the chin and move on, it is part of the random element in bridge. As others have said, if you think one of your methods is sub-optimal, you need to analyse results with it over a large number of boards.

Did partner play the ♥2 on your ace lead to signal for a club switch?

It is true at my club although from my perspective the 7 or 8 minutes a board online feels much too slow (pairs shouldn't need as long as F2F because moving between rounds is instantaneous (i.e. no dithering in the middle of the room causing maximum obstruction trying to remember which pair they were following on a Howell). I play fairly quickly (too quickly sometimes) and my partner and I are not infrequently waiting until what feels like the next ice age for the field to finish. It was the same in the club pre-COVID and it will be the same when (if) we ever go back to full F2F bridge. It is fair enough last year because online bridge was forced upon people who haven't used it before (or they don't play bridge), but we've had over 18 months to get used to it now so the "I'm not used to it" excuse doesn't hold anymore. Some of the slow play is due to inexperienced players which I can make allowances for. My club plays an active and successful role in bringing newcomers into the game, meaning over the years, there has been a shift in field standard from experienced to inexperienced. The worst evenings are those with a large bias in hands the other way leaving you defending three quarters of the time, slow play by the oppponents leaves you pushing up against the clock on maybe half the rounds, and on BBO your board gets truncated if you go over time and someone else or a robot decides what the score should be which you don't really want to happen. Years ago when I directed quite frequently, I was often a non-playing director so I could keep an eye on the repeat offenders and take the last board off them if I knew there was no chance they were going to play it in the remaining time. I have a reputation in the club for being good at keeping the movement going to time.

2♠ is weak, and 4♠ is almost certainly pre-emptively bidding to the level of the fit given your strength. They are likely to have a 10 card fit and partner is unlikely to hold any wasted values in spades. This means wherever partner's values are (if any), they will be in hearts or clubs (you hold all the diamond honors), in other words complementing your honor cards. It is a 30 point pack situation. Give opener 7-8 HCP, combined with your 18 count gives 25-26 HCP between you and opener. That leaves around 14-15 HCP between the other two hands. Give partner 6-8 of those in hearts and clubs. How many ways can you give partner a couple of club/heart honor cards and not have play for 5♦, bearing in mind you just need him to cover two of your four losers? The answer to this question will tell you that bidding 5♦ is a decent shot. In in the unusual case of partner being completely broke, you might not be defeating 4♠ on a handful of possible layouts. I don't like the idea of bidding 4NT. The disparity between the minors is too large, and if partner has more clubs than diamonds, you may still want to play in diamonds. There is one danger if partner has long clubs to the queen and short diamonds, if you are in 5♦ missing the club ace, the defence will go club to the ace, club ruff, cash spade winner, down one, when 5♣ makes, but that would be unlucky.

I'd probably bid 5♦. It is not in the realms of fantasy that partner could be covering two of your four losers given they likely hold no spade wastage, and passing feels like a way to gift wrap the board to the opponents with a bouquet of flowers. There is risk in bidding, but passing is risky as well.

Assuming 3♥ is invitational, I pass, an 8 loser hand opposite an invite is not game. Game makes because 3♥ is an underbid holding honor cards in both partner's suits, a one loser heart suit, and a good chance of no diamond wastage, I'd go through FSF before bidding 3♥.

I was referring to online forums whan I said that, not bridge clubs, and yes, there are places you can get your face smashed in if you act like an antagonistic prick in F2F public.