luis

A bidding problem (Matchpoints) Non vul Vrs Vul Opener: xxx, AJTxxx, AJx, Q Pd: KQxxx, QTxxx, -, AKx 1) What contract would you like to play on these hands? 2) How would you bid it with your pd? A play problem (Matchpoints of course) Dummy: (North) xx, KQxx, Txx, AJxx Your hand (South) xx, xxx, AQJ432, KQ The bidding: West North East South 1d 1s x 2s p p 3c p 3d p p p LHO leads the sK RHO playing an ecnouraging 7 and switches to the c9. Std carding. Plan the play

Hi pb, You bring an interesting subject with this thread: how do expert players know when to double a partscore at MPs? And I think that the answer is the dreaded "judgement" word. Some recommendations/tips: 1) Use the LAW - If you have an 8 card fit and they have an 8 card fit and they are trying to play at the 3 level with your side having about 22-24 combined HCP then it is usually right to double. - 4 of a minor at MPs if your side has 8/9 trumps and they have 8/9 trumps should be doubled unless there're clear indications they can be making that contract. 2) Don't get framed, 0% is better than 0%! - If you think you can make your contract and they compete in a dubious way or a strange sequence that may not be duplicated then you must risk a double you are already in trouble. Example: You open a strong club and they compete to 3s after you find a heart fit. If you had a normal 1NT opening you'd better double 3s because other tables may be just playing in 2h after a transfer uninterrupted sequence. 3) Try your luck - When your opps are vul and you are not +200 is better than any partscore by you, use a lot of takeout doubles at the 2 level and try to see if pd/you can leave the double for penalties with some values in the trump suit and defensive tricks. 4) Evaluate your offensive/defensive ratio - When your hand is offensive bid one more or pass, if your hand is really defensive think about making a penalty double. So what are defensive values? * Honors in short suits * Honors in their suits * Aces 5) Make sure you are prepared for a penalty double - Think about what your pd will or you will lead if you will have a very ackward lead then don't double. If your pd is likely to make a bad lead the don't double, examples: you bid a bad suit previously or you have a very finneseable trump honor ex: Qxx. Pd usually lead a trump against a doubled partscore. 6) If they are in a missfit then you should think about doubling 7) If you have short trumps and you know pd has 4/5 trumps then it is you the player that must double, declarer can get trumps wrong for an extra undertrick. (Offside doubles) Just some tips, Luis.

Claus, I think you can't just "agree" to play Lambda with somebody and pretend to do it without a good previous talk and many agreements and understandings. Two players playing the same system doesn't make a partnership.

German-Moscito auction 1c (15+ any) 1h (4+ spades) 1s (relay) 1n (4+ hearts) 2c (relay) 2s (sp = he) 2n (relay) 3d (4-4-2-3) 3h (controls?) 4d (5) 4h (where?) 4s (no A or K of spades) 6h (tks!) I'm sure my friend Ben might have a naturalistic auction using Spiderman-Keycard to find the Ax doubleton in diammonds :-))

1) & 2) If you are bidding natural after a positive response to 1c then how do you know when delcarer is balanced say for example 4-2-3-4 when he is 16-18 or when he has... say 20-22 or even more? Some player should limit his hand and in natural continuations of a strong club that player is usually declarer because the positive reponses are unlimited. In that context you do need the 2nt bid and you can then use some form of checkback or similar. If you want to improve your strong club opening why don't you play super-precision asking bids after a 1c opening and positive response? They are simple, they can be powerful if used with good judgement and they are easy to learn. Maybe a simple scheme with SAB, TAB, Delta, Beta, Omega, CAB and Chinese asking bids is enough. Just chat email your pd and describe the rules such as: 1NT after 1x positive is CAB If we didn't use 1NT as CAB then any 4c bid is CAB New suit after a 1x positive is SAB Supports are TABs and setup a trump suit New suits without a trump suit are delta New suits after a trump is stablished are chinese etc.... The names of the asking bids are not always the same just take them as examples....

Not really. Because if the 1c opener will describe and responder will ask then the 1x bid is superfluous, either one hand asks and the other describes or the other way around, switching in the middle of the auction is inefficient and reverts to what relayers find bad in natural methods. Besides that 2NT seems to be too high to start investigations since opener can be 4441, 5440 and his strength is unlimited. It can work but I don't think it is a valuable treatment.

It is clear that we have different point of views of this game my friend Misho. My goal with any partner is to work hard on the system and the partnership style to prevent us from guessing. Good players are not best guessers they just have to guess less than the average players. I wish you luck with your guessing game, I prefer to study :-)

This seems to be a very poor approach, where are all your asking bids? Preempting your pd when your side is in a forcing game situation at the 1 level is surely a very bad idea. That's why you play precision, to have more room than the standard bidders, they are the ones jumping to 2NT, you don't have to do that....

Bid 1NT, is the less of evils.

If they open 4h we have to double, pd can pass that but since we don't have many options over 4h he should be very reluctant to pass the double since we can be cold for a slam or grand slam with a hand holding 2 aces.

Of course you can count me in to play a forcing pass system or to play against a forcing pass system. I find forcing pass systems nice, effective and inofensive to the opps. I know they are banned just because it is against the "industry" of SAYC. I can play Regres, Lambda or another system if I can read the notes. I also like to play special defenses agains forcing pass systems, creating very curious situations at the table. Like the "pass" overcall and the fert-on-pass and many other interesting treatments. A lot of fun.... Luis

Hi pb, I've played Polish club, Tangerine and a dual-club system called "The chameleon" too 1) The theory is that weak/strong cuts down on interference, particularly on the part of opener's LHO. To what extent does this actually happen? Against such a system you should bid as if it were a natural 1c, so that eliminates obstructive/destructive methods that you may have prepared against a strong club. However nobody plays a prepared defense against a strong club so the difference is almost zero. 2) How much do the weak bids mess up the accuracy of the strong bids? Depends on the system, usually this is controlled. Luis

No, unless an "expert" can play the queen in a 4 spade contract when they lead a side suit and he sees Q9x in dummy and xxx in his hand :-) Or re-open with 2nt after 1nt (2s) p p I think it would be nice to have a way to "classify" players upon your own opinion as you do with friend/neutral/enemy you can also assign a level or some notes to each player. For example: "expert" but this guy opens some crazy weak 2s with 4 cards!

Hi, I'd like to propose a Bridge-Base based Challenge the champs competition. Each month or each 2 weeks 2 pairs will bid hands prepared by a moderator and bid them using BBO bidding practice tables (or teaching mode or something), final contracts in each deal will be previously have an score assigned and will be send by email to a trusted party for full certification. The pair winning will be back as the defending champions for the next challenge. As a way to start I just want to poll if you like this idea? If so then I'll try to ask Fred or an admin to create a challenge the champs forum where we can post the results, comments and so. I'd volunteer to be the moderator of the first contest if the idea is accepted. Luis

So Ben we agree again :-) That's good. I like your responses to 4h and I agree that 5s would have been the best bid. I think that over 5s we should use 5NT as ace-asking. I've played this treatment when they compete to the 5 level and we don't know if we can play 7 or not. Too bad we can't find the cQ or can we? Luis

I think that a small change in the client is the solution. Let's have the chat area only for chat messages to/from the lobby or the table. And add a small one-liner area at the top where BBO directors and admins can post notifications. It would be nice to make that are a horizontal-scrolling area. Tourneys can be announced, special events like vugraph can be announced etc and without interferring with the chat. It can be used to announce new versions, lessons about to start, etc etc. Just an idea, Luis

John, tks for understanding my point, even with super-full disclosure you can't have the same amount and quality of information than a player that knows the system. Knowing what were all the options that a player had and didn't use is a very valuable piece of information. If your opps play super-precision and the auction starts 1c-1s;1n-2x;2s you can get alerted that 1n asked for controls and that 2s is a trump asking bid, but you don't know anything about declarer's hand. Can declarer have for example 3 spades and a side minor suit with say AQxxx ? If you know the system you know it would be unlikely since he would have started with an sking bid in the side suit followed by a support bid and then 4c asking for controls to get a better picture of pd's hand.... Now how can you get this level of disclosure at the table? Impossible, opener can't comment al the possible asking bids and sequences he could have used because that would take many hours. It's not true that you don't have to know your opps system to play better, because the more information you have the better your decisions will be. In team matches or team championships I really like to understand my opps system at a level I could have played with them, it helps me to prepare a defense to know when a particular preempt can be more damaging, when they can be concealing a fit and prone to interference, when they are just missbiding, etc.

You can't assume much because the preempt makes things difficult, pd has just a few "normal" bids for a zillion bridge hands. pass, 3nt, double, 3s, 4c, 4d, 4h, 4s, 4n, 5c, 5d, 5h. In about ten bids you have millions and millions of hands so it's evident that one particular bid applies to many different situations. In average most people decided to take his chances and pass the double.

I said it was risky to pass the double but I still think it is the right action. Maybe the black two suiter should bid 4h instead of double to be more descriptive. I think 4h is surely s+m in this context since you can bid 4NT with both minors.

You should be a good guesser, I prefer to know than to guess :-)

I used to play a lot with M.De Carlo, a local expert in biding systems and general bidding theory. He deviced many systems: "The relay club, Tamarindo, The Chameleon, Titanium" with several different goals and design principles. All the systems were combined with an overcalling system called "Stealth" the idea was to have a system when they opened the bidding. This overcalling system was the key to all our wins. Why do I mention this? Because his overcalling system used power doubles and NT for takeout as the overcalling sys described in Daniel's page. I must edit and publish the notes for the overcalling system somewhere. My contribution to your question: Power doubles are fine because they limit your 1x and 2x overcalls as well as the 1nt overcall, then it's easy to make limit bids by advancer. we used a relay to the double as the negative with all the other bids being game-forcing. The 1NT for takeout bid is great, opps usually have problems with this treatment and you are in a very confortable position in the auction. We decided that 1NT was always a 4-4-3-2 takeout with 2 cards in opener's suit and 11-14 HCP. Then the cuebid was an asking bid and overcaller indicated his 3 card suit with steps responses 1st step = same color as declarer's suit 2nd step = same range as declarer's suit 3rd step = the remaining suit Then advancer knew the exact distribution of overcaller and that was really good to investigate game/slam chances. A new realy was asking for controls. We complemeted power doubles and 1NT for takeout with 1x bids for two suited hands (including 5-4) and 2x overcalls for 1 suited hands 11-15 hcp (no weak 2s). Relays were used to know the exact distribution and controls of overcallers. Our best result was a relay auction to end up playing 3 spades because we didn't have enough controls for game :-)

Ben, Starting with a 2n opening of course. How would you have bid the hand?

I didn't reach chapter 3 yet, but I would say that the 2nd hand is better because you are preempting an undisclosed spade fit your opps may have. Am I right? An implied fit in my bidding theory dictionary is a fit known only by 1 player for example if you open 1c and pd bids 1d, now RHO bids 1s and you pass with Jxx of diammonds, then you have an implied fit in diammonds, because you know it but yout pd no. I just read the first pages of ch1 mainly on Jump Fits and similar concepts, I'm familiar with that stuff but I like a lot how the material is presented.

I did alert 3s as Slamish, interested in minors. Even without an agreement my bid is conventional so a self-alert is just fine. I think we agree on this one.

Eric & pb, thanks for the link! Got it and reading it now :-) I do have "contested auctions" by Mike Lawrence and found interesting to compare both books.