karlson

I think it's probably good to have a separate way to show a shapely 3M bid and an 18-19 balanced 3M bid. I've never found myself wanting three raises below 3M though.

Remember also that you're only looking at the ones that are beatable at all.

You know, every once in a while someone comes along with a didactic and slightly condescending posting style, and tells us that we all suck at bridge. Now oftentimes the bridge arguments are laughably and provably wrong (think: foo), and it's not worth paying attention to. But sometimes they have a valid bridge point, and I don't see why the rhetoric should distract us. I know many people like the spade lead, but mostly it's a matter of instinct, no one has a particularly convincing argument. Everyone is guessing, as they should be, since no one ever has enough datapoints from experience here. When the simulation(*) suggests so strongly that the spade lead is wrong, whatever caveats you apply to the DD analysis, I think it's worth rethinking. And I admit that on this hand I'm convinced. Neither declarer nor dummy is likely enough to have an outside source of tricks, and if they're marginal on high cards, one trick from the lead will often be enough. (*)I've redone the sims with what I think are slightly more accurate constraints (gave 2n bidder 2245 hands, put an upper range on hcp, didn't let responder have 5-5 or 4-5 in the majors, tried to take away some hands that would texas. I didn't try to model what exactly the 5d bid should look like.) The spade still comes out at least a 3-1 to 4-1 underdog. You can look at hands here. (**) ok, I noticed one bug, I only looked for leads that led to -1, sometimes there will be some leads for -2 that don't show up. If you think that this unfairly biases against a spade lead, I think you're crazy, but of course I'll redo it.

I think it's right, it's going to be very noisy with such a low probability of success. I ran 10000 again and I got 107 beatable, 10 must lead a spade, 69 anything but a spade. I can run a million overnight just for kicks. I think the first 1000 was just an incredibly lucky set. I didn't change the code at all. Obviously the probability of beating it in practice will be rather higher, since these hands include plenty of hands where they're just cold for grand and might try to bid it. Could try to do something a little more intelligent there, but I don't see why it would affect the spade/non-spade decision. If someone wants, they can see the 107 hands from my last set where 6h was beatable and see if they think there's a significant double-dummy bias. http://www2.decf.berkeley.edu/~chubukov/jdeeg_prob.html. The winning leads are in the corner where the makeable contracts usually are.

My guess is that it took jdonn about 30 seconds to come up with his example. That said, since this hand has inspired such strong opinions, I thought I'd try to do some statistics. I dealt 1000 hands consistent with jdeegan's criteria, except for the spade void part (which may not be perfect but do not seem ridiculous to me). 6♥ was beatable 66 times out of 1000. 12/66 any lead beat it (by any lead here I mean any suit, 6 of these you could lead any card but the ♠K.) 9/66 a spade was the only lead to beat it 0/66 a heart .... 6/66 a diamond .... 5/66 a club 33/66 anything but a spade 1/66 a club or a diamond While the usual double dummy qualifiers apply, I think the numbers strongly suggest that one shouldn't just dismiss jdeegan's point. Edit: 10000 hands give only 141 hands where it's beatable at all, so I probably overestimated that probability, but the relative gains of the different leads seem pretty much the same. 85/141 hands any lead but a spade is necessary. 11/141 a spade was the only lead to beat it.

Nice, good catch. But I realized there's no reason I can't give south the ♦J. Now they have 32HCP, so surely that's worth some extra credit.[hv=n=s9xhj98752da5cqj7&w=skt742htd432c9863&e=sq8h43dkt976ct542&s=saj65hakq6dqj8cak]399|300|[/hv]

[hv=n=s9xhj98xxxdaxcqjx&w=sktxxxhtdxxxc98xx&e=sqxhxxdkj9xxctxxx&s=sajxxhakqxdqtxcak]399|300|[/hv] How'd I do?

Despite all the noise about the bidding, the final contract is not ridiculous. I don't understand the plan of ruffing spades, it seems like that will never be enough tricks. I think we have to plan on having the clubs come in if we lose a diamond trick. At least we might have a decent guess by then about what to do in the suit. So the question is whether to cash ♦KA before playing ♠AK, or whether to play ♠AK first and then take the percentage play in diamonds. I'm very bad at calclulating exact odds, but my rough estimate makes the diamond finesse worth about 6% over the drop, and the chance of spades 1-6 or 2-5 on our left is about 10%. So I would cash the K and A of diamonds before playing two spades. Edit, wait sorry, this is nonsense, they don't automatically get a trump promo on 2-5. It only happens if the diamond finesse loses, so I think it comes to about 5%. So very close, I guess I should do some more exact calculations.

I've tried this kind of 1n once or twice, and I don't recall any good results from it. I like the arguments for the 2c rebid, especially if playing that it can systemically be 2.

x..2n seems right. I don't see why this is a particularly spectacular 21. Yes, some finesses rate to work, but partner knows that too. The big negative is that your spades do not rate to be a strong source of tricks.

I think if east has Qxxx, I need him to have exactly 3 hearts to succeed anyway (he wins the third diamond, returns a club). But even throwing that case out, I agree with you.

I agree that weak/strong is a bit out of fashion now; I never cared for it myself. I think people generally have realized that in modern competitive auctions, the downside of not getting both of your suits in immediately outweighs the slight losses in constructive michaels auctions.

I would bid 4♥ over 3♠, don't really think this is an underbid. Now pass 5♦. Don't see anything better than the straightforward lines. In 6♦, win the ♠A,♥Q,♠ruff,♥ruff with the T and try to draw trumps. In 6♥, win the ♠A,♥Q,♠ruff, try to draw trumps. If there's no heart loser, ♦AK and a club finesse. If there is a trump loser, and they return a club, hop ace and run all your trumps before hooking the diamond just in case lefty started with QJxxxx x Qxxx Kx.

[hv=d=w&v=n&s=sakxhjtxdakq9xxcj]133|100|Scoring: IMP p-1♦ 1♠-2♥ 2♠-4♣ 4♥-?[/hv] Agree with your previous bidding? Are you done now?

I'm pretty sure all the doublers would still double if you changed ♦K to ♦x. I think most decent minimums with stiff diamond should double here. But even so, ♦K is not automatically worthless, especially against a wild preemptor who need not have ♦AQ.

I find that I'm very bad at guessing what unpredictable opponents are doing, but moreover, I don't even see how that helps me at all. Double seems normal.

I have to admit that I would splinter, especially if playing a style where one bids 2d with 4 diamonds and 3 clubs. Yes, you can bid 3c after 2s-2n, but responder will assume 3-card support and not 4 (in fact a recent thread suggested 3c on a doubleton iirc). If you have 9 spades, responder can bid 3s and you will still get to spades that way, even at the same level, with much more information exchanged (especially since 2s doesn't say much of anything). Over 2s, it seems easy to imagine an auction like 1s-2c-2s-2n-3c-3n. I guess if you're going to move over this, then starting with 2s seems ok, but I don't think it's clear to do so. What if responder bids 3n over 2n? Again, doesn't seem like a great auction. Even over 3red, 4c doesn't show this good a hand for clubs. Basically I agree with clee that partner won't play us for spades this good if we don't bid 2s, but I think it's more important that partner will never play us for clubs this good if we don't bid 3d. I think that the "keeping the level low" argument is kind of an illusion - either we're going to set spades at 3s, or we're going to have to go to a pretty high level to really show clubs.

I don't much care for these agreements which involve cancelling the previous lead suggestion. You're never going to know that you're going to get a second shot (for instance if you double a keycard response or something hoping to double slam later to pinpoint the lead of the other suit, what are you going to do if they stop in 5? You'll have to pass, and partner may make a terrible lead now). And on this hand as well, I think there's no way that doubling 6n should cancel a heart lead somehow. Surely partner can tell whether your heart holding is likely to be void or KJxx for the double of 6d.

I'd pass.

Damn, from the title, I was sure this was going to be a thread about a confusing cuebidding sequence in a slam auction. I'd bid 3c, could easily both make. Did I hit the 5-2?

If you play 1h-1s-p-2d as NF, which seems common enough, is it LDO that 1h-1s-p-3d is forcing with diamonds? I would expect there to be no way to force with diamonds on either of these auctions.

It also seems like a fine idea to play the double of any rebid by opener as takeout of hearts, not that I would expect that to be standard. But otherwise, I agree with Han. Responder has shown short spade and not a world of values, so east should be willing to jump in. I think it's actually unclear if it's better to double or bid 4s (you are more or less assured of at least an 8-card spade fit if you trust the opponents' auction).

Can you tell us about a hand where you gained by playing doubt-showing redoubles? Heh, I missed this, sorry. I can only remember one recent hand where where I got doubled in 3n, and even that I don't remember perfectly. Maybe I don't play enough bridge. Anyway, the bidding was something like 1d-(1h)-x-2c-2h-2s-3c-3n-(x). I had a terrible hand for a GF (some rotten 12 count) but with a good club fit, and I was happy to be able to redouble instead of running unilaterally in case partner had a lot extra. On the other hand, I have never had an accident or disaster with it (or not been able to play 3nxx when I wanted to), so I think the only thing that's safe to conclude, like with most things, is a lack of datapoints.

I think that the doubt showing redoubles actually do work quite well, but obviously you need some understanding of what they imply. Here, I would never make one with this hand because a} I have exactly what I've shown (12-14 with 4 diamonds and good spades) and b} I have no particular reason to think that there's even another place to play if we run. I don't know partner's whole hand, but it sounds like he had a diamond fit, and a questionable heart stopper. That seems like a normal redouble to me, and this hand would run now with so little help in the rounded suits. Rethinking about what partner had, it sounds like he had not much in spades, at most ♥K, maybe ♦KQ, and maybe ♣KJ. That's the worst GF ever, so he should just run. If he meant his bidding to be invitational (seems likely), then I blame the system misunderstanding.

I actually play something very similar, but split the 4 splinters into min,mid,max/stiff,max/void. Unlike wank, I think differentiating between strength ranges is very important. It feels like the supermax splinter works pretty well when it comes up in bidding practice, but in practice it's never come up in actual play. It may be that your split is better.