luis

2h Seems to be a practical bid to me.

Gweny, It's very simple real TDs are TDs that direct events at clubs in their countries, they are usually approved by their NBOs so they are supossed to have shown a good understanding of the rules. I certainly understand that some BBO TDs direct a lot of tournaments but that doesn't make him a TD in my opinion. There's a difference between "hosting" a tournament and directing it. Maybe for optimal results a tournament needs both a host and a director. The host is somebody with BBO tournament experience in charge of subs, clock management, answering questions, etc. The TD is the one that rules when there's a problem. Luis

4s is the best bid.

4d not a problem. Disagree with Ben this time, no matter what Zar says if you open the hand 1d you can have several problems. Problem no 1 is not having a single defensive trick so your pd can end up making a wrong decision later. Problem no 2 is not putting pressure on the opponents, a dangerous advantage.

Pass is always an option, I like mixing some heavy passes when playing Moscito, sometimes they reopen and get punished, sometimes they don't reopen and miss a contract.... They only know we don't have a game.

You are wrong, There're NO International Organizations that made restrictions or banned psyches as long as they are not conventional bids. TDs have no rights to ban psyches. It's a pity that you post such a comment because it may confuse TDs to believe that they can ban psyches in their tournaments or even worst encourage TDs to do such a thing. There're a zillion of pseud-bridge tournaments with restrictions I think they are intended to protect the newbies but the real effect is that newbies will never learn. It's like flag football, if you only play flag football chances are that you will get really hurt in your first real match. I still think that certified TDs, real bridge TDs should be noted in BBO in some way so you can know before enetering a tournament if it is directed by a real TD or an amateur. A checkbox should also be added to highlight tournaments with unusual restrictions like systems banned, obligation to play a system, restrictions over psyches etc. In this way "normal" tournaments where you are allowed to play "normal" bridge without unusual restrictions will be easy to spot and you don't need to read the whole rules of contest to determine if the tournament has restrictions. Luis

Sure Luis, I am aware of that. But before getting into detailed defenses vs 2-suited bids or concealed one suited hans, we realy need to understand how to defend vs natural overcalls :rolleyes: hence this post... :) About reopening with xx or xxx in opps suit: would you reopen also with a dead minimum 10 count ? is it not too dangerous to reopen even with a max (given xx/xxx in overcaller's suit) when pard can have little to contribute (he failed to make a negative double himself) ? The negative double must show some values. The reopening double can lead to trouble: yes but it doesn't happen very often. Knowing that opener has 2 cards in the opps suit can help responder to find an escape when his pass wasn't a penalty pass. If you are using the mini-nt in 1st/2nd positions NV the risk is minimal because when they do have the values to penalize you they frequently have the values to bid game and advancer won't pass the overcall because it is just too dangerous. So when advancer passes then pd has a penalty pass ot the points are distributed more or less evenly between the two sides.

If they don't know that they can't have more than 37 they probably don't know what they are doing so I wouldn't care.

I like the negative double approach for a weak NT. 1N - 2x - dbl : Takeout 1N - 2x - pass : Can be a trap pass (opener reopens with doubleton or xxx in the suit) But if you are really serious and want to play the best countersystem you must prepare specific responses for each possible 2x bid by the opponents, you will find the optimal system is different for each bid.

I wouldn't double with that hand and is not similar to the 1st one, in the 1st one my pd opened the bidding. I won't double 4h with AKJxx,xx,Axxxx, x

1) Double, automatic. 2) Double, automatic. 3) hK intending to hold the lead and find the right switch if pd has the hA. I suspect my pd has AKQ of clubs and forgot to double this contract otherwise this is not a problem.

Bad if they can make 5M/6M and your good sacrifice is in diamonds. Bad if you can make 5d but not 5c Very bad if you can make 6c or 6d :-) And even worst if the hand is a missfit and pd has a weak hand with 5-6 in the majors.

you mean big double ??? if you want to show the club andf ignore the diamond its ok , just bid 2c. double is imo is a very bad bid, that have nothing to do with this hand. Like whereagles says, it's time for some psychological, non-scientific bidding. The big Double will keep opps out of their slam with the biggest chance of all other bids imo. The scientific bidding from Luis shows the hand perfectly however, but gives away too much info imo. Don't you want to give away as much info as you can ? You can win a slam in this hand, in fact it is very likely that you may have a slam in this hand. I don't think it is obstructive, in my opinion obstructive hands are the ones that don't have enough offensive power to outbid the opponents so you need to interpose a very high bid inmediately. I highly dislike fancy obstructive bids in hands where you may be obstructing your own game or slam. It is not clear if they will be cluttering our hand with spades or we will be cluttering their hand with minors so I prefer to describe as accurately as I can. I'm amazed everybody thinks we are on defense.

By rule I bid 2NT/4NT only when the two minors are the same, so when pd chooses he knows he is choosing the best fit. In this case I'd bid 2c and then 4NT in my next turn showing 6-5 or 7-5 with more clubs than diamonds. Luis.

3s is competitive. 3h is INV to 4s (a suit we know the doubler has) XX = intention to penalize pass = let them play we are out of this :-)

First of all North should have bid 3d. Specially NV vrs V, a lot of good things can happen after 3d. Second a diamond lead is crystal clear. Imagine pd has QJTxxx of diamonds and the club ace, yes they do have a diamond stopper and no, they can't make 3NT unless... oh yes, unless you just lead another suit. I think it is a horrible lead even if it was the succesful lead. Btw: Bad problem without a diamond honor in north it would be interesting to check what line of defense should we take knowing that declarer has AKJ of diamonds.

A direct raise to game never creates a forcing pass situation in my partnerships. In other situations it depends on the vulnerability as many said here.

Abstain, It would have been much more interesting a lead problem without your comment about a squeeze to see what experts would have lead and why, the interesting thing in these problems is to understand what players think when selecting their lead. Now it's just trying to determine what lead is more likely to beat a squeeze. The best lead is not the one that succeeds, is the one that most experts would have choosen, because while it can be wrong for one hand it would be right for most of them.

You have to alert only bids that you have agreed with your pd either explicitely or implicitely due to partnership experience. In this case the questions you have to ask yourself are: a. Did I agree with pd the range of a 1NT reopening bid ? b. If the answer of a) is no have we done this enough times so he knows what kind of hand to expect from me ? If the answer to either a or b is Yes you have to self-alert and inform your agreement, even if implicit. BTW: As hrothgar said 1NT in that position is usually 10-14 so your hand is a gross distorion of noramlity and will be labeled a psyche if you don't have an agreement or MI if you do have an agreement.

hi, well not sure bout this .knwing some laws/wich laws?? acbl?? uk rules?? still doesnt mean anything, know several uncertified tds doing a good job based upon experience and tablefairness and im very sure certified tds in real life have a lot to learn when they start hosting online. In this case its not 100% for me. Maybe to a wordclass player its obvuis. Maybe player in question wanting to push opps into game, if u td one u see a lot of weird bids, some are questionable to say least, some are puur casino players. bidding whatever they "hope" for and if go down u see 2 red dots , this happens in pairs tourney, so for sure in indy. With this all said and done, i woud first talk to player in question asking WHY he bid this way. How did the rest of the bidding go, what contract/result was reached? all things to consider i guess. And it is always another story when u are involved yourself, pressurre/other calls/adjust to be made and so on. Not easy beeing a td.And this is we all agree i think a long story/discussion when it is happening. Can only say what i think i woud do. spwdo Spwdo: Believe me, This is an egregious case of using UI. I completely understand the player may not have realized he was using UI but no matter the lag or whatever the 4d bid is going to automatically trigger an adjustment in case of damage because there're no bridge reasons to bid 4d.

Let's see, declarer has the cK, and dAK (or I switch my pd), he also has one or two heart honors, with KQJ my pd would have lead a heart instead of the doubftful club. With something in spades he could have overcalled 2NT, maybe not with 5 spades. Declarer will play this hand in hearts and he has the cQ and the sK entries.... So I think he is likely to make 10 tricks (2c, 1s, 5h, 2d) maybe 11 with the dJ with an obvious finese. I will play my pd yo have AQx of spades so I take the cA and switch to spades inmediately trying to liberate two defensive tricks before declarer stablishes hearts, if he can cash cA, one heart and two spades I'm sure 9 tricks will be an excellent result for us. Luis

This is why South African transfers are better, use 4c->4h and 4d->4s instead of Texas. It clears the ambiguity of 4h in competitive auctions and it's more difficult to have an "accident"

Ah, the magic of the BBO forums. Each time somebody asks something about Dont or Capp everybody starts his post with "That's bad, I play...." followed by what every player thinks is the best convention against NT. Since we've already had this discussion so many times why don't we just focus in answering the thread? Now regarding your question: I think Don't is better against a Weak NT because you can double with 5332 hands whenever you have 11+ hcp or a suitable hand. Pd can leave the double with values or remove to his shortest suit if he has a weakish hand. I also think don't is better in 4th position against either weak or strong NTs, assuming you play Capp or Dont against strong NT you pass whenever you have a balanced hand with values so a 4th position double by pd can be ideal. If your only options are Capp and Dont I'd recommend: Dont vrs weak NT Dont vrs strong NT in 4th position Either Capp or Dont against strong NT in 2nd position Luis PS: I've played suction, dont, astpro, wolsey, capp and in my personal experience the success ratio is: 1) suction 2) dont 3) astpro 4) wolsey ... the abyss .... 98) capp

This an easy case of UI, even without enough evidence there's no reason to bid 4d other than UI. Maybe TDs that know the rules or are official TDs should be given a "TD star" or something so you know who is ruling when you register for a tournament.

1m-3M WJS with 7 cards instead of 6.