karlson

Funny, the ♦9 makes one of the variations a bit more elegant, but really it's unnecessary as the basic idea works fine without it.

1. Bridgemaster 2. Doubledummy.net

We currently play 2d as invitational with clubs, 2h as inv balanced, and 2s as gf with clubs. While I'm not super-attached to these, I was trying to keep as much constant as possible, just for ease of transition and memory load purposes.

Looking at many people's notes on transfer responses to 1c it seemed that there was no clear consensus on how to play 1s and higher bids. It looks like the most common way is to put a lot of hands into the 1s response, which can basically be either -6-10 balanced -weak with 5-4 in the minors -weak with just diamonds -gf with diamonds, maybe with major -inv with diamonds, maybe with major A little overloaded, whether over the 1n response, or when 4th hand interferes. On the other hand the 1n response is specifically 6-10 grabbit, so is probably underused. I thought one might play the 1n as the weak with both minors hand, and then one can play normal 2-way checkback over 1c-1s-1n. Maybe if one does this, the weak with diamonds hands should also be thrown in to 1n, I don't think this will lead to serious competitive problems, as opener is unlikely to want to compete with short diamonds opposite the 5-4 hand. Then bidding 1s and then bidding again in competition shows inv+ 100%. Thoughts?

Very

I think the way I heard it explained was that the river was chosen because going back to the airport would have involved a difficult turn, while he was already on almost a straight shot toward the river. I could be wrong.

[hv=d=n&v=n&s=satxhkqxxxdxcj9xx]133|100|Scoring: MP[/hv] 1♥ - 3♦ - ?

It seems to me that 5c pretty clearly asks about diamonds. So I guess this must be trumps.

So if declarer has something like AQJxx Jx Hx Kxx, we need to play a club now. If he has something like AQ9xx Jx KQx KQx, we need to play a heart. Obviously these both work missing one of the top diamonds too. Seems like rather a guess to me.

Oh come on guys. Yes, double was weird last round, but it's worked out fine. At least we've found hearts, and partner may well have been endplayed into 3N over 3d with an iffy club stopper. I would definitely bid just 4h now and wish partner luck. Slam needs way too many cards in partner's hand.

Link? I've been looking for a good structure, and I can't seem to find this thread.

3♣ seems like by far the best route to staying out of slam if partner has ♣xxx. There will be plenty of time to check for the heart control.

Ooh, the 7. How'd I miss that. That may well be the way to go.

Given that he has terrible suits already, it's pretty clear to play west for KJxxx as the other posters mentioned. Another minor factor is that west may give away the hand by not covering the ♣Q looking at K9xxx, afraid of blowing the suit. He shouldn't, since you would have surely finessed first with ♣QJT, but sometimes they don't work that out in the collegiates :)

I think this would work pretty well. Might be tough to remember though. with no wakeup effect.

Funny. No one for a natural 4N with responder's hand over 3d?

Obviously it's a tradeoff, but I would not want to give up playing in a major when the opponents may have a weak 4-card holding. With my regular partner I play that double is 13-15 bal or somethign very strong, 2n is 16-18, and 2M is natural. We play our usual system over the 2n overcall (basically we ignore the opponents completely). (edit, that's obviously over the 2c majors. I haven't come across the 2h variant, but I guess we'd play the same except double is t/o of hearts).

I have to admit that I learned splinters as a minimum GF with shortness. That makes it about 9-11. Admittedly responder has a bad 9, but I wouldn't call it a ridiculous overbid. Playing this style, opener basically doesn't move with a minimum, even with little wasted in the splinter suit. Opposite ♠A,♣K,♥K, we still have a bit of work to make 6 (and might just have no play on a trump lead). So I think 4n was a significant overbid (and obviously so were the rest of east's bids, clearly in this style A K AK is not a splinter. I am very happy to be playing tiered splinters (one way to show 9-11, another to show 12-14) in my regular partnerships.

Actually I've changed my mind. I'm just going to bid 5c, assuming it's not a fit-jump, since I'm going to do this over 4h anyway, and it's not clear to me that I will sit for partner's 3n, either.

I'll overbid as usual to get my suit in. 3c. I'm not particularly interested in playing this hand in spades though of course it could be right.

I'd correct to 3c. I don't see how this can be wrong when partner didn't bid 2s over 2c. The previous bidding seems fine.

That's certainly true, but I'm not convinced it's a strong argument for playing it as natural. Either way, responder will bid 3s next to show a GF with 3 spades. Is it more useful for opener to have shown short diamonds and 4 clubs, or a decent 5 card diamond suit? I think this is somewhat unclear. Of course if you do restrict it to 6-5 as you said, you win on hands when responder is now able to bid 3s with 2 of them, but lose some frequency. If you think that a club splinter is often of little use since responder has real clubs so rarely, then sure. But I think the 6-5 is much less frequent.

I would think splinter undiscussed, but I believe plenty of good players play it as a good 5-5 (or 6-5 or whatever).

I was thinking 4324 18-19. I think those definitely have a shot at game opposite a 1h bid.

I agree that most of the suggested hands fit the auction, but I don't see why this can't be a good 4315 also. (or maybe 4225) Maybe you think that hand should bid 1s? 2d? Wouldn't 4324 bid one of those also?