luis

Maybe I'm evil but I think that 2NT, 4H and 5d are really horrible bids. Even playing 2NT as 12-14 natural I'd rebid 2h or 3c and not 2NT then 4H over 3H is like saying "I don't have a real opening bid" message that is in serious contradiction with 2NT. Finally about 5d I think I'm out of words.

I think 4s is the practical bid.

I agree with returning a club it doesn't make sense to assume that declarer does have the club king so my pd has the club king.

I play the revised Keri version that The Hog posted in this forum some time ago and I'm extremely extremely happy with the results. So now that the topic emerges again thanks to Ron Klinger for his work and the other Ron for kindly posting the new version. Luis.

Low spade if declarer believes you are leading a singleton he will refuse the spade finesse and hope for the dK to be onside. A club can work but for that you need to find the cQ in pd's hand.

You can make 5c, 4s, 4h or 3NT from south ? :-)

I didn't read it, I glazed over every page at the bookstore, while my wife was trying to figure out different ways to kill me. So I think I had a good view of the contents and how they were developed to decide if I was going to like the book or not. I understand it can have some words about hand evaluation but there were too many pages showing how the law doesn't work in several situations and I decided It wasn't wise to spen money in a book that had so many pages devoted to show something that we all know like trying to demonstrate something that doesn't need a demonstration. I estimated I would use about 30% of what the book had so it wasn't a good buy for me. If you write a book about a 1NT structure you wouldn't spend a lot of pages showing how many different hands can open 1NT would you? :-)

Hi Gerben very nice questions There're several approaches. I used method 2 and method 3 but recently I've decided that both methods had some drawbacks specially when the auction becomes competitive. So now I like to limit the strenght of the hand as early as possible. Over our strong club for example I'm using 1d as either 0-7 or 12 making all the other bids 8-11. This better adjusts for the frequency of the HCPs that responder will have and makes a better use of the bidding space available. The duality in 1d is always easily solved even in competitive auctions.

Pd's jump to 3h shows a strong two suiter most frequently 5-5. Now I think a 3s bid is pointless and we are fixed to bid 4s just in case it makes, the diamond ace still looks bad but we have a singleton and the club queen so in many contexts 4s might make.

In a recent travel I decided to buy one bridge book to handle the idle times at airports. I had this book in my hands and finally decided not to buy it, instead I took the 2003 World Championship book that is to me like watching a movie of the championship. The reason I didn't like the book is that I couldn't find anything constructive in it, we know the law doesn't work in many hands, we know it's a tool that you can use along with your judgement so what is the point in showing when it doesn't work, what's the point in stating numbers and percentages ? I'd have liked a book about when to detect competitive auctions where the law should not be used instead the book looked just like a compilation of things we already know marketed under a rebel title. I agree 100% with Fred about judgement and one thing I learned is that a bridge player never stops developing his judgement the more you play the more you watch and the more you read more information you have to take better decisions.

I bid 2s, I don't like the diamond ace it's either a waste or it will be ruffed out after the dK opening lead. I won't pass expecting a double because someone, my pd or my LHO will pull to hearts where are the 12 hearts?

Then: Are spades 2-2 or 3-1? Who has Axx ?

Well... I think the beginning of the play is almost automatic win the hA and play a low diamond. But now we need to know if the diamond ten wins the trick or if they take the dA and if so what do they play. If the diamond ten wins the trick then a club is played. One way to ten tricks is 5 trumps in hand, heart ace one diamond and three club ruffs (two low one with the sK). If you can only ruff one club then you should aim to take two diamond tricks.

This is my view: First of all you must call the TD because there was an irregularity, West alerted something and East had something else so a call to the TD is quite automatic. About a ruling I think it's obvious that there is an infraction since East passed 2s knowing that his pd is just bidding his best black suit, had thin been played with screens East would have surely bid something over 2s. This is one of the reasons why it's very important to ASK whenever an alert is made. Now if I were asked to provide a ruling I think that it's irrelevant if East missbid or West missalerted, East intended 2d to be natural and after a 2s bid by his pd they should probably got to 4s now I should poll players of similar skills as North and South and without any alert or explanation ask them if they would have doubled or not 4s with the North and/or South cards. Then I would adjust the score according to the results of the poll. Assuming 4s is down3 (he was down 1 in 2) if 50% of the players doubled then the result comes from averaging the imps won by 800 and 300 respectively. I would also rule a procedural penalty on EW since East bid was based on what his pd explained about the alert.

Well, about 7 years ago in a big event my pd showed the black suits over a strong club auction when his LHO bid 4c (cuebid) he passed, they landed in 6h I held 9xx of spades and 7xx of clubs. I lead a club through the cuebidder and pd had AQ over the K so the slam was down one. They asked my pd why he didn't doubled 4c and he replied "If I double 4c you don't play the slam". Why did I lead a club? Because I noticed the cuebidder was really nervous when he bid 4c and he was very nervous before the lead (he was going to be dummy) so I decided it could have been a phony cuebid.

I think it's crucial to bid 2s so if we are allowed to ask for aces and we have them all pd can go to 7h when he is asked with 5NT if he has the spade king the key that is important if there's a grand slam.

Thanks for the responses, some good views. About hand #1 it was an opinion poll, I'm in the GF "wo what" band. Hand #2 is interesting because looking at your cards I think it's quite obvious that you should be bidding 6d, K of spades, nothing in hearts where pd seems to be void, queen of diamonds and QJ of clubs for pd minors, too many good signs. But if you bid 6 they will likely defend to 6h then do you bid 7? It's a roller coaster, specially when pd is doing EXACTLY the same thing that you are doing!!! Pds hand: Axx,- AKxxx, AKxxx If you bid 5d pd passes (!) planning to go to 6d if they bid 5h now things get interesting when they do bid 5h and YOU bid 6d, then pd passes expecting to bid 7 if they defend to 6h. Amazingly In 7h they go for 800 only so almost anything you can write in your column is quite good. One of those hands....

If I'm forced to bid a suit that is not clubs with this hand I'd choose the best suit I have so I bid 1 spade. Maybe I'm just too simple :-) you gave a lot of well thought reasons for your bid my only reason is that spades is my best suit after clubs so I admit that your bid may probably work better. But just imagine your dear pd correcting 5c to 5d or 6c to 6d :-)

Not always when I'm dummy, but other than that, yes, of course I do. It's automatic. On any hand where I was declarer or a defender I would always expect to be able to tell you every card played in order to every trick. OK, I've thought of an exception. Sometimes as declarer you have an absolutely textbook play problem - the sort of hand that appears in magazines as "how do you ensure the success of this contract". When there is a mechanical line to take, so it doesn't matter what the defence play, (i.e. so you could claim except playing it out will be quicker) I take less notice of their pips. p.s. I only play f2f, but I can't see why online should be different. I completely shutdown when I'm dummy, I like to ask questions such as "did you have some spades pd?" :-) It's good taking a break and being dummy is the perfect moment and it's impossible to get mad with your pd if you don't see what he is doing :-) Without screens if you pretend to count the hand as dummy and follow the play you have to be careful of not making faces or showing signs of horror before picking the card that pd called from dummy :-)

This is a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde example South has a personality disorder, first he is a rock and decides not to open 1s but then he bids the hand 3 times including an unilateral jump to 4s that could be described as "pathetic". If south opens 1s a normal auction will lead to a better contrac, for example 1s-2d;2s-3d;3h-3NT or something like that. It reminds me a hand where one of my pds decided not to open with 11 and then doubled, bid a cuebid, jumped in a suit and finally bid game in another suit :-). Isn't it better to just open light ?

Curious tactics Mr Watson! If you bid 1NT followed by 3s expecting pd to bid 4s with a minimum hand then why don't you bid 4s and rest in peace? Seriously, how bad can it be to play 4s down 1? Just to make sure you don't play 3s making 5 when opener has a fitting minimum. I think that 1s followed by 3s is a very bad distortion of the hand since it's a strength based invitation, you expect opener to go to 4 if he doesn't have a normal minimum but with responder's hand a lot of minimums will produce game. If for some reason you decide to invite you need to show the heart singleton, because the key to make opener evaluate correctly if he has to bid game or not is to know that you have a heart singleton. If you don't have a way to show the singleton in an INV sequence then just bid 4s. All this if you think you have to invite I really think it's more practical to just look for the best game for your side (can be 4s, 5d or 5c, even 3NT) instead of flirting with the idea of stopping below game.

I'd have loved to have this hand as a problem without seeing the opening hand. I bid 2c Game Forcing, because with the other alternatives I might lose a slam. I consider responder's hand a game forcing hand after the 1s opening. Because it has: Three card support with an honor Qxx A rufing value: singleton in hearts x Honor in diamonds AJxx A five card side suit headed by an honor Qxxxx Even with the worst missfiting hands 4s should have a play and if opener has a nice hand it's easy to construct some slams with only some HCPs. Call me an optimist or a lunatic but being vulnerable I think that with this hand the plan is to see which is the best game for us, not see if we have game. Go run a simulation 4s should be makeable in more than 60% of the hands were pd has a 1s opening and you get this hand.

Yes, but I'm not proud of this habit :-). Sometimes it would be a good thing to be able to relax and keep energy for the hands ahead... But no, I can't resist trying to break a squeeze for 13 tricks in a 3NT game where you can see 12 tricks :-)

3c, if they are going to play the hand I want a club lead. I'm surprised nobody mentioned clubs.

Sorry I missunderstood the problem I though that pd overcalled 2c and we had to decide what to do... Singleton diamond in opener's suit and QJx of support looked awesome. If the problem is the response by the 1d opener's pd then I think I agree a NF 2s is suitable all the good things for a 2c overcall make the hand bad after the 2c overcall :-) That's why I was referring to a 2d cuebid :-)