luis

Agree with Ben. This is a balancing position and we have a clear pass. If we are in a pickup partnership it is a guess but playing with an expert I would tend to pass.

This happened to me yesterday at the local club: You are playing a team match and you receive the following interesting hand [hv=d=n&v=n&s=sh3dkt6543ckjt432]133|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] You are thinking you are going to bid a lot when pd decides to open 1♠ (14+ and forcing in your methods but would have been a natural 1♠ opening too) Your options are: 2♣/2♦/2♥ = 10+ GF (2♣ may be clubs, or balanced or spade support) 3♣ would show 10+ 5-5 in clubs and another (3♦ asks, 3NT then shows diamonds) 1NT = 0-9 any hand Note that playing 2/1 you have more or less the same choices. What do you choose and why? After discussion I promise would start a new thread with the subsequent development of the auction. Luis

As described (note I say as described) this is a candidate for worst ruling of the year. If your agreement is that 2♠ is weak your pd has the right to bid it with 0 or 12 or 13 if he likes it and alert as "weak", the fact that you passed with 11hcp is a clear demonstration that you took the bid as weak so there is no base for missinformation. Furthermore they made a non-bridge penalty double so even when there was an infraction (there wasn't) an infraction does not give you the right to stop playing bridge and claim redress. It's normal expert practice to bid a weak hand with opening values from time to time, specially when pd is a passed hand. After pass - pass many experts might open 2♠ with 0 or 12 or 10. My personal record is 16 :-) I once opened a weak 2 in third with 16 and declarer landed in 3♠ down 3 including a bad claim "he can't have the club King so blah blah" I think he is still in shock and that was last year. Luis

Great post Ben, thanks for the information!

If you have a partnership start with some meta-agreements, things that can be applied to different bidding situations, specially to competitive auctions. As your partnership evolves you can try to specify some common or problematic situations. As an example with my pd we started with the gross meta-agreement that "doubles are never for penalties", with this in mind we had 0 missunderstandings about doubles and they only scored a doubled partscore against once in the last 2 years of regular play. Since this agreement wasn't super-optimum for some specific situations for example after our NT is overcalled we sat down and developed the bids after 1NT-something. Maybe it helps you maybe not I think Ben (Inquiry) has a lot of interesting ideas on meta-defenses.

I'm not saying I "expect" them to be having a missunderstanding but they might be in one. Is just one factor.

Hey Justin this is by far one of the nastiest problems this month in the forums! 1 over 1 is usually forcing for most pairs so the first thing that comes to my mind is that the opponents may be having a bad missunderstanding. (1 vote for pass) On assumption opener has 4-x-4/5-x distribution and responder has 4-4-x-x distribution, the only case where we don't have an 8 card club fit is when opener has 4-1-5-3 and responder has 4-4-2-3 then who doubles 2♣ ? (1 vote for 2♣) Maybe opener bid a fancy 1♠ with 3 cards because it was forcing? (2 votes for pass) 1NT is an option auto-pulling myself to 2♣ if 1NT is doubled. (1 vote for confusion) I Pass, so bad, so bad

I must say I don't like the second double. I already hate doubling wiht a void so doing it twice is bad for my heart. 4♣ should be more healthy he already doubled the first time so doubling again is just tempting a bad decision from you.

4♥ completely discouraged with KJTx in pd's singleton.

4♠ let's try the simple way first.

3 cards for me too. With Kx 2NT looks simple. Then you bid 3!s and life is good.

I don't play that a double "Shows" spades and diamonds. I play that a negative double just denies a bidable suit or a penalty double or support for opener, by inference many times this means he has cards in the remaining suits that's why I think it's flexible to plyay 2!d here as natural and not showing extras. PS: I also hate when people say negative doubles "show" this or that they deny things that's why they are called negative :-)

3NT for me and pre-apologize if wrong. I protect the cK from the lead and I have to take one less trick than in 4♥ where my hand provides no ruffing values. There's also the danger of an early trump promotion if I play on hearts.

5422 to me. One of the rare sequences where 2/1 lets you describe your exact shape we should embrace the oportunity and do it :-) 3c or 3h would be a fragment bid showing 5431, 3s showing 64 shape and 3d with 5-5. Luis

I think the most flexible agreement is that 2♦ does not show extra values. Assuming we are playing standard negative doubles not exactly promising a number of spades or things like that. Luis

We have a 7 card fit in spades and we might have an 8 card fit in diamonds, they seem to have a 9 card fit in hearts. I think there are not enough trumps to bid 3♠ over 3♥ or 4♦ over 3♥ here so it's either pass or 3NT, I think I'm going to pass since the chances of disaster in 3NT may be even greater than in 3♥x. Luis

Isn't this a simple case of missinformation without damage? Maybe I'm missing something but looks quite automatic to me to start posting strange ides about rules, demonstrations, psyches, the acbl. If this keeps going maybe we can blame Gerber (not Gerben!) for something related to this incident.

http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?showtopic=5553&hl=

Spade, if this is wrong I move on to the next board. Pd asked spades I lead spades.

Except that it completely ruins the purpose of the poll. Doesn't it? At the end of the day, we need to decide on the purpose of these polls I like to believe that the primary purpose is to improve the system rather than to score well. The purpose is not to score well And I really hope is not to improve the system, then all the problems are almost meaningless. The purpose of this poll is to see how the experts bid in some difficult bidding situations with the minimum tools that a natural system like bbo-advanced offers. The idea is to see how each expert uses his judgement to determine what each bid will mean and which one will probably trigger the better outcome.

4♥ showing I like diamonds. With a good hand pd will cooperte with 4♠ and I can bid 4NT. With a hand that already stretched to bid 4♦ pd can bid 5♦ and I will pass. Luis

No, again you are one of the people that think that a player making a bid without an agreement should say what he has to the opponents and that doesn't exist.

Except that it completely ruins the purpose of the poll. Doesn't it? Let's agree 4NT here shows 0-6-3-4 with 8 controls. I bid 4NT showing my hand and pd will decide. Scoring: 4NT 100 (if it shows this hand) 4s 100 (if you agree 4s shows this hand) 5s 100 (if you agree 5s shows this hand) double 100 (if you agree X shows this hand) Bids that don't work for this hand 0 Intelligent bids not imposing an agreement we don't have: priceless

I can't play bridge without agreements. Can you? Guessing is not my kind of game. "Guessing" actually exists (invented in Denmark). It's a fun game, but it has nothing to do with bridge. Roland Imagine you are lurking around in a bridge club you are asked to play a duplicate team match with a player you just can't say no. Unfortunately the match is just starting so your pd just says "BBO-advanced and std carding and the rest just use judgement ok?" you start saying something about not being able to play without agreements specially about 3♠ overcalls over 1 of a minor but the cards are dealt, pd opens 1♣, rho overcalls 3♠ and you have the hand of the problem. Now what? Do you raise from the chair and abandon the game? Cmon Roland, you may not like this problem and I may not like others but please accept the conditions and follow the rules. If you think you can never play with a player without an agreement about this very specific position you can always abstain. In fact if your vote was based in agreements that the conditions clearly say we don't have you should ask your vote to be nullified since you are voting a different problem. Luis

You have, I have not. 4NT is not ace asking as I play it. You never have a hand where your only problem is how many key cards partner has. Use 4NT for something better, like two possibly three places to play. Roland You have it I don't have it.... This is not the purpose of the polls or is it? I mean we are supossed to be playing BBO-advanced as if we had agreed with pd to play that and then we have to solve the bidding situations posted. When BBO-advanced doesn't cover the meaning of a bid we are supossed to use judgement and logic to bid. So comments like "4nt is this or 4s shows that" are completely meaningless I'm not interested at all in what 4NT or 4♠ is when you play with your pd, I'm interested in what you would bid at the table with the posted conditions. The idea of the polls is to show how experts use judgement to determine the best bid available not as an interview about what each of us play with our pds. Note: This is not 100% for you Roland I assume you are saying you expect 4NT to be 3 places to play in this situation which is reasonable but many posters are showing a tendency of saying things like "with my pd I play that xx means yy" and I don't know the rest but I'm really not interested in such responses. Luis I agree with all you are saying, Luis, but the problem is that the continuation with a hand like this is a matter of partnership agreement, not about judgement. What is 4♠, 4NT, 5NT, whatever? BBO Advanced doesn't tell you, so it's all a question about what you agreed on. With this said, I think it's perfectly legitimate to state what you think is the best method for you and your partner. Roland This problem is interesting precisely because you have no agreement with pd. You just forgot to talk about the 1♣ (3♠) situation and now what? I'm not interested at all in any agreements I'm interested in what would you do without agreements. Luis