karlson

I think south has a pretty easy pull (presumably to 4N) of the second double, since his offense to defense is way higher than it might be. Even a double game swing is in the realm of possibility (something like Kxxx xx KQxxx Ax). I think the decision over 3h is tougher, but I think I would bid 4c, which presumably also gets NS to 5c.

I will admit to now seeing the winning squeeze line, lest people either give me too much credit and don't look for it (yeah right), or think I'm a stubborn idiot for not considering it further.

I agree that the squeeze doesn't work, but there's an endplay. Cash 1 diamond, play 3 rounds of hearts, and east is toast (low club sets up a simple squeeze against him in the blacks). It's the kind of thing you might actually stumble into accidentally. Many commentators were suggesting ducking the opening lead, and I don't see how to make it after that.

Thanks uday. Disabling sound didn't seem to help very much, but I realized that I could turn off card animation. That helps a lot. If I turn off card pictures, it's completely smooth.

I got it to work very easily on Ubuntu (7.04) today. I had to install msttcorefonts to get the cards to look normal (and symbol.ttf off my windows machine). I get a bunch of errors at startup ("class not registered") but it runs. The only problem is that it's incredibly slow (~5 seconds to make a bid or play a card, which makes it almost uplayable). Running it with linux_wine=n actually sped it up a bit, but it's still not smooth. Is this just something I'll have to live with? Also, is there a way to get it to take up the whole height? It was at this state initially, but ctl-w set it back to normal proportions. "Maximize" is disabled for me. Thanks.

I think I would open without the ♦Q, but if you took away the ♥J as well, I'd probably pass.

I thought it was pretty tough (as some noted, partner might not have classic takeout shape but just values), and ended up passing. Everyone I gave the hand to afterwards passed, which surprised me a bit. Anyway, I still think it's close but bidding is probably right. I don't think they have 10 spades on this auction very often, so probably partner has two spades as well. That's bad from a total tricks point of view. Also he isn't a huge favorite to have 4 hearts, since he might have doubled the first time. All that seems to suggest about 17 trumps, and maybe fewer tricks. On the other hand, we do have these great hearts. Anyway, partner had a ton of defense, 4h was rolling (probably making 6 in fact) and 3s was only down 2. So I guess the lesson is to bid. However both opponents were very light, which kind of screws up the total tricks evaluation (normally one would expect 9 and 8, but with us actually having 25 hcp or whatever, 10 and 7 is certainly more likely). [hv=n=sakhqxxdaqjxxcaxx&w=sqxxxh9xxd9xxxckx&e=sjtxxxhkxdkxcqjtx&s=sxxhajtxxdtxc98xx]399|300|[/hv]

I'm not sure that it's 100% that east has AK doubleton in diamonds. He might have switched being pretty sure the third diamond is not cashing (not sure what west's spot meant if anything) and looking for two quick heart tricks in case declarer had something like AQJxx Kxxx xx Jx. In any case, I think there's a pretty strong inference that east doesn't have the spade queen. Firstly with a decent chance at a trump trick, he might not have tried the HA underlead at all, but more importantly, if he does have it, he must surely be able to place declarer with the rest of the high cards, and would play for the heart ruff. In fact, I probably would have played a spade to the ace and run the SJ after winning the first heart. This gave them another chance to beat me if lefty has Q8x(x).

white/white, matchpoints ♠xx ♥AJTxx ♦Tx ♣98xx 1♠-p-2♠-3♦ p-p-3♠-X- p-?

I think partner owes you a raise.

I suppose I can give our auction: 2s-4d-4s-5h p-6h Sure, 6H was a bit of a guess, but I think once partner shows a real heart fit it must be odds on. Partner's actual hand is a pretty normal minimum I think.

Would it make any difference to you if you knew, absolutely and for a fact --- put aside for the moment the question of how you know this, just assume that you do know it, to a moral certitude ---, that West knew exactly what 5♥ meant before he even asked North the question? Only if west knew what north thought it showed. The point of asking is not to find out what's coming down in dummy, but what north is bidding based on. If somehow west knew that north knew that it was 2 w/o, then I guess it would change my mind.

I can't imagine penalizing EW here. If East had not inquired further, and tried to make a subtle inference during the play based on north not having had information about the trump queen, I doubt anyone would have had much sympathy for him. So he's being cooperative by making sure he gets all the information before the hand, and he should be able to ask both with and without the trump queen.

I used to play it as exactly 4 cards in the other major and a longer minor (typically 6), an awkward hand to show. But eventually we switched it back to stopper ask, judging that you're really stuck without the stopper ask, and it comes up at least as frequently.

Also, when I played wizard, it was actually reversed (so 3s showed 3-1 and 3h showed 1-3). The wrong hand plays it if you end up playing the major, but otoh, they don't get to double as often. Thoughts? Of course it never came up, so I can't tell you how it worked out.

I play this with many people, and yeah, we'll bid it on 4333 sometimes. Basically it's the same question of whether you'd stayman with 4333. I remember a thread on this a while ago and certainly people admitted that they'd stayman at least sometimes, so I don't see why this would be different. I believe we play 1n-3h-3s as cog (probably 4333), so sometimes you can get out in 3n even with the 4-4. Ironically, we do have a way to show the wizard splinter over the 2n opener.

It looks to me like after the spade hook wins and righty shows up with the hearts you're just cold, regardless of diamond Q location, by playing a 3rd heart. If he returns a diamond, put in the J, then play the DA (leaving a tenace on the board whether lefty covered or not), and play a fourth heart. Righty is endplayed to give you the rest of the tricks. If he returns a spade, just set up the heart to get 3s+3h+2d+1c. No?

[hv=n=sxxhqdqjxxxckqjtx&w=s9xxhat9xxdkt98cx&e=skqjtxxhjdc98xxxx&s=saxhkxxxxxdaxxxca]399|300|[/hv] At the table I doubled, planning to bid diamonds over clubs. Only Noble seemed to suggest that this sequence should maybe show an extra heart, as opposed to extra strength. I think partner would probably have taken it as showing a better hand, and I kind of doubt that I have that. I'm not convinced that dbl-3d showing 6-4 is good, either - it seems to suffer more or less the same problems as ELC in other sequences. We didn't play g/b 2N in this auction, sorry if that wasn't clear. The rest of the auction was easy. 3s from lefty, 4N(minors) from partner, 5s from righty, double by me, float. We got it 2 (I thought I screwed up by not leading or switching to a trump, but I guess it turns out I can get endplayed in hearts for -2 anyway.) 5d seems to be -1 on a spade lead.

[hv=d=s&v=n&s=saxhkxxxxxdaxxxca]133|100|Scoring: MP[/hv] You open 1♥, partner bids a semi-forcing 1N (can't have a 3-card limit raise), and righty comes in with 2s. Pretty normal 2/1 style, double is takeout. No particular agreements about continuations, do tell if you have useful ones.

What did declarer pitch on the heart? Presumably also a diamond? Assuming 1N was 15-17, declarer can't have AAK in the minors, so seems that partner is playing games with the diamond discards and has the DA (and we need to get it now if declarer has five clubs). If he doesn't, then declarer has only 8 tricks anyway.

I've never played gazilli, but this scheme sounds interesting. What if responder has the shape (i.e. a lot of hearts) which would invite or force game opposite a normal 2h rebid, but doesn't really want to encourage opposite other strong hands? Is 1s-1n-2c-2d-(not 2h) 100% gf? Is Qx Kxxxx Jxxxx x enough, or is this type of hand forced to bid only 2h (and possibly miss game opposite the minimum). Also, I think I missed what opener does with a minimum with spades and clubs. Is it still 1s-1n-2h-2d-3c? and the gf black two suiter starts with 2N?

Transliterated Russian ♠piki ♥chervi ♦bubi ♣trefy

I'm a little surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that hearts didn't get raised. We have 11 hcp, partner has around 10, therefore lho probably doesn't have a total yarborough. Most of the example hands given so far have about 4 hearts - is it that unlikely that partner has 6 of them? If he does, then we may well have a lot of trouble setting up side suit tricks. Is this a weaker inference than I think? Oh, I voted for 3c.

I've had this happen once or twice. It seemed to go to the next person in alphabetical order. Probably something to do with the way BBO indexes the people logged in.