luis

As Roland said a 3♣ bid followed by 3NT is the best way to suggest a club slam invitation. Without that I'm not sure, I have the feeling that 6♣ should have a play so I guess I would move on but not clear.

I don't understand this. If you had all the keycards and the heart Q you play 7♥, if you are missing the hQ you play 6♥. Where's the question? If you don't know abou the hQ then it doesn't matter since the hand is ruined.

50-50 between pass and 1♣. This hand violates all the rules I have to open a preempt: - Don't have a side 4 card major - Don't have a void - Don't have good values in the short suits - Don't be close to opening at the 1 level - Don't have a good hand with a good suit I know some of you will vote for 3♣ but to me opening this 3♣ is repulsive.

My Diagsnose: "Acute Expertitis" After 4♦ just use RKCB, 5♣, 5N and the final pass are just too dangerous in a new partnership. Being able to simplify is a good skill.

I don't really find 5♥ so appealing, if you can make only 4♥ bidding 5 is quite silly, if you can make 6♥ bidding 5 is not brilliant either since pd won't know if he has to bid 6 or not. So I only like 4♥ and 6♥ in this auction. Passing is silly, you will get them to exchange information and know what to do better, if you directly bid 4 or 6 hearts they have to guess whats going on inmediately. As some of you said, who knows, anything can be right but I think 5♥ is a road to nowhere.

At the table I would bid 3NT so 3NT. I think most good players will try 3NT here. Luis

3♣ = 10 Showing that you have a club suit when you have one can't be bad. 3♦ = 8 Supporting pd's suit with Hxx and a void in opps suit is fine but don't you have clubs? 4♣ = 7 Maybe an overbid but stresses club length too bad it goes beyond 3NT 3♥ = 6 Asking for stoppers can be good if pd has hearts, you can play well in NT 4♥ = 5 Maybe you need a fourth diamond for such a bid Pass = 1 May work, who knows I think it's crazy but... X = -25 This can't work, when pd has hearts you will be -670 in a hand were you can make 3NT, I would say that is quite a tragedy. Luis.

#1: I just bid 3♣ I don't think 3NT has any merit with my hand. #2: If declarer has the hA then the only switch that may win is a club (pd needs KQ of clubs) If pd has AJT of hearts only a low heart wins (club holdings don't matter) If pd has the hA and QJ of clubs I have to play the hK and then a heart to prevent pd from crossing hearts hpoing that I have KJ So I think I'm going to play the hK now, this wins when pd has hA and QJ of clubs and when pd has the hA and the club Q and declarer misguesses clubs. I guess this is more probable than AJT in hearts or KQ of clubs with no heart ace.

6♥ I have a lot of excuses if this doesn't work.

That's funny - I have always thought the opposite was true :) Fred Gitelman Bridge Base Inc. www.bridgebase.com Fred, It depends if you are better or worst than the average field :-) If you are worst then playing anti-field systems works in your advantage. If you are better then you want to play the same contracts they play and hope your cardplay or defense will produce a result. Maybe that's why you always thought the opposite. ;-)

Well I'm in the middle of both sides. I think that from a theoretical point of view there're systems that are better than others. Which ones are better and how better they are is one of the unsolved misteries of bridge. I don't know the answer. I'm based in the simple fact that systems are different so if you put identical "clones" to play all the bridge hands in the world using two different systems in a team match one of them will win. That's why I like naturalist vs scientists matches and similar, because I'm intrigued by the question. Having said that I also think that bridge judgement is the #1 factor to become a good player and that how confortable the partnership is with the system is more important than the system itself. I play different systems with different pds and I'm quite happy with all of them, for one of my partnerships we switched from precision to an ad-hoc strong club then to 2/1 and now we play fantunes style, we failed with strong club systems, we failed with 2/1 and now we are doing fine with fantunes. A story that I think should be similar to what Greco and Hampson experienced. When I was 19 or 20 I was very excited about the system now maybe I'm getting older but I care less and less about the system and more and more about bridge things, like style, competitive agreements and carding. Luis.

3NT. No redouble? I might then make this even with a doubleton in spades in pd's hand.

Well I have been playing this since September in last year, so what I'm going to say is what we are doing with the 2 level openings and how the results are. We play 2♣, 2♦, 2♥ and 2♠ as 9-13 unbalanced but can be 5332 in third position. We often upgrade good 13 counters to a 1 level opening, good 8 counters (specially 6-4 hands with 2 aces are opened 2x without much problem) With 5-5 and 10-13 HCP we frequently prefer NOT to open 2x since we have speciallized responses over 1x to show 5-5 hands with 10+HCP, those responses have produced good results and it's hard to describe a 5-5 hand after a 2x opening. From the 9-13 hands that qualify as 2x openings as described above we open about 90%, when vul vs not, for example we don't open a hand that has 9-10 HCP and honors in the short suits. We don't care about suit quality but location of honors instead. Over our 2x openings we have been using a different approach than the one described, we keep the 2NT relay over 2d, 2h and 2s for forcing game hands. But then the other bids are NF (at any level) and constructive. This means that we pass with missfit hands without values, we don't try to improve the contract. Since our responses are constructive opener is encouraged to bid with a fit and a good hand or a very good hand himself. After 2d-2h, 2d-2s or 2h-2s we use 2NT to show a good or intermediate hand without a spade fit, we raise with 3 with a good hand, we pass with bad hands (with or without a fit).

The problem with BAM is that a weak team can never defeat a good one, there's 0 chance. Playing imps if the find a lucky slam or some gambled games they have a shot, specially when the other team can't find swings due to poor play. At BAM the lucky slam or gambled games can win 1, 2 maybe 3 boards but they will loose all the others, the partscores, the games where they can't find the overtricks, the defenses where they discard badly etc etc. As a result nobody wants to play BAM and that's why IMPs are popular. Where I live Swiss butlers where you play 4 matches of 7 boards scored by IMPs are the de-facto format for club tournaments, it's quite obvious that this is because the results of such a tournament are at best completely random. Heh, I guess I find a good place to vent...

I think 8-11 should be ok, it will present many problems to the opps and pd should usually know what to do. 2NT is a preempt, it removes 2 complete levels of bidding so lets use it as a preempt and not to show strong hands, when you have half the deck there's no need to preempt pd. I don't need a gun pointing at my head, I think I've played a lot of openings crazier than this one.

If we are NV I'm happy to pass, I think I will have a hard time trying to do something with my 5 spades in a 4h contract. If pd has short spades he may reopen, in the worst scenario I can miss a non vulnerable game.

3NT call the SWAT team.

We had some difficult hands last night, I've selected three examples that maybe of interest, all kinds of comments are welcome. The posted auction is what happened at the table. Let's start with #1: [hv=d=n&v=n&n=satxhakqtxxdakxcj&s=sjxxxxhjxdqxcktxx]133|200|Scoring: IMP[/hv] The bidding was: 2♣ - 2♦ (5+HCP not a "real" positive, geebrally 5-10) 2♥ - 2♠ 3♠ - 4♣ 4N - 5♦ (0-3) 5♠ Down 1

Bridge is a game with many facets. Things involved in a team match go far beyond reaching 7♠ or 3NT or whatever, the fact is that Ek's team won a big match and earned the right to go to Portugal and now a new journey begins. Good luck and thanks for a well fought match that we were happy to watch for free in a very nice vugraph broadcast.

2♣-3♣ should be preemptive or semi-preemptive. AKA a Mixed Raise. 2♣-2♦; 3♣ should be forcing 2♣-2NT I play as Both Majors and INV hand

3NT shouldn't be a complete disaster but it can be :-)

1) Yes agree 100%, supporting hearts with xxx is not good. 2) 3♥, automatic and feeling very very happy with my auction.

2NT no, I don't think it's clear. Pass is certainly an option. Luis.

I already said why, because I play the 4♦ jump as solid diamonds, 4 spades and nothing in hearts or clubs. If I can either have something in hearts or clubs or both pd would have to flip a coin to know what to do over 4♦ and there isn't a lot of space.

I don't think so. With this cards he counts 5 spade + 6 diamond tricks and a sure ruff for 12. Have to check the keys. 4NT is OK this time, Qxxx, xx, AKQJxx, A is the worst scenario. For this, 4♥ Last Train will solve this problem. But partner with AKxx, xxxx, x, Axxx has no problem after 4♦. Regards, Zoltan With my respect I found this absurd, if pd with all the keycards doesn't bid 5NT then he could as well have passed 1♦ since he has no idea of bridge. After 4NT-5♠ pd will bid 5Nt counting all the keycards and we can bid 7 based on the solid diamonds. If he bids 6 then we are missing one keycard so we don't care. The idea of the poll is not to find the best bid with a pickup pd but to find the best bid with your pd if you were playing BBO advanced. So we can assume some things like: a) Pd plays the same system we play :( Pd is not an idiot c) Pd will try to understand our non-agreed bids d) We won't blast to some contract assuming pd will make a mistake if we don't