SoTired

Preempt, preempt, preempt... 40 years ago when the dbls were penalty and most bidding was seat-of-the-pants, it made more sense to have constructive preempts, but nowadays, you have to get the opps out of their powerful, fancy bidding tools and back into seat-of-pants bidding.

I think the modern practice at this time is use the Dbl and bid over a preempt as strong-flexible, rather than single-suited-too-strong-for-overcall as done over a 1-of-a-suit opening

I agree. Rather than compare this to a multi-2H, why not compare it to natural weak 2's. If you use any "multi" bid with an unknown major and responder holds xxx x or similar in majors, responder is prevented from extending the preempt, especially with the modern defense of Dbl showing a weak NT. In that case, when opener's suit is wrong, opps get a tasty penalty. When it is right, opps find their fit with less interference.

put me with the crazy 3C bidders. Odds are more likely that this will disrupt the opps rather than cause us headaches. East opens 1D,1H,1S is 3 situations. What is the 4th situation? Edit: Open 3C as dealer, also. Not all partners agree with my weak-suit preempts.

3C is non-forcing. If opener has a powerful hand, opener can bid a GF 3D.

Summary: 1) For normal overcalls and low level jump overcalls (like this one), responder may pass with a penalty dbl. 2) Responder's pass is not forcing 3) However, Opener should strive to reopen with shortness in opp's suit, either by bidding or by doubling 4) MOST IMPORTANT: Have more faith in your own opinions.

Basically, you use 2D and 2H for weak 2's in H & S, but the "multi" part is the subdividing the range 4-7 and 8-11. I am not sure this is an improvement. First, it uses 2 bids for 2 weak-2 bids, so it does not appear to free up any other bids for other uses. Second, it tells the opps the strength range of opener without being asked. During the bidding, that information may help the opps more than responder. Unless the bidder is dummy, if the opps defend or declare, that information may assist them during the play.

You are right. There is no dummy in spades because there is no bidding. But there is deductive reasoning based on bidding, just not as complex. There is squeezes and endplays, but even more difficult because you must deduce 3 hands rather than just 2. That is why I think 3 handed is so skillful (remove the ♣2 before playing). One thing is because more bridge skills are involved with only 2 unknown hands to deduce. Some of the play is even more difficult because not only must you determine the most vulnerable player to attempt to set, but the 3rd player must come to the same conclusion and cooperate. Maybe you have never played 3-handed Spades at a high enuf level for high enuf stakes.

I took the "play spades" comment as a constuctive comment, also. I think spades is an excellent game and it is the most skillful card game for 3 players. And if you know someone that wants to learn bridge, but does not have the time nor inclination to learn the bidding, but might later, have them learn and play spades. Much of the knowledge and experience gained will be transferable when they want to transition to bridge.

I think Goren's methods were mostly Culbertson's converted to point-count. Culbertson's problem was that Honor Trick Count was inaccurate. It was not uncommon for the bidding to go 1N-3N down 4. It also involved doing mental math with fractions. Anyway, the answer to your question is RIGHT HERE on BBO. There are many players on BBO that learned bridge from the Internet and have never played F2F. They don't read any books and only learn by playing. They play with others like themselves and develop an ad hoc natural system that only loosely looks like SAYC/ACOL. They also appear to be constantly reinventing the wheel. Sometimes they develop some very poor habits and misconceptions that inhibit their growth.

I must really suck at bridge, because I don't get bidding with this hand at all. Are we a passed hand? Did I miss that. If not, I can't bid with this hand. If we bid 4S or X with hand, what do we bid with stronger hands with the same shape, like AKxxxx x Axx Qxx, AKxxxx x AKx Qxx, etc? How is partner to gauge whether to continue on with goodies that could not take action over 3H? For me, I won't take action with less than a sound opener, if not more.

uh - I am confused by the 3S opening bid. Is this the hand that responder was expecting? You have to lead a low spade now. If responder has the ♣K and ♥J, you can't wait. If partner has either black king and either red jack, a spade return should set the contract.

i play 2M in 4th seat shows about 14-16 HCP and a good 6-card suit.

You had 2 chances to raise spades and both times you did not. So 3N denies spade support. If you wanted to show spade support, you raise spades. It is that simple. 4S was a poor choice.

Do you mean that? I honestly can't remember the last time I was furious at a bridge partner. And, I find it hard to imagine that a successful partnership could work this way. you are absolutely right

they bid game, neither partner enters the auction previously and suddenly dbl is takeout? Or anything other than 100% penalty. Sheesh. If my partner pulled this dbl, I would be furious.

Responder was limited but not opener. 1D then rebid 2C is not considered a "limited" bid since it is made on any hand short of a game-forcing jump shift. From a min opener up to about 17 HCP. Opener's 3rd bid now shows a game invitation. Since responder has a max for previous bidding, responder accepts openers invite. It does not make sense that responder wants to show 3 value ranges: 3C, 4C and 5C when responder is 6-9. So 4C must be forcing. I don't see any advantage to bidding 4C rather than 5C. There is no slam here. I thot Brian's description and analogy were perfect.

As an experienced CS, both interested me. We used BridgePad in the Nationals in LV. Then I had lengthy conversations with the BridgeMate people in LV. BridgePad has at least one important extra feature: EW security code. EW establishes a 2 digit security code in round one and then uses that same code to "OK" all of the rounds. BridgePad also allowed EW to OK each board as it ended or all boards of the round at the end of the round. BridgeMate required EW approval of each board at the end of the board and could not go back to correct a previous board in the same round. BridgeMate could not make corrections at the terminal, only at ACBLScore. BridgePad allowed a director to enter a special "Director Security Code" and could make corrections at the terminal. The BridgeMate salesman said some of these things were going to be added in the next release. BridgePad is smaller and looks more modern. The most important user thing is: Keystrokes. How many keystrokes does it take to enter scores? My partner was sitting North, but it seemed that he was hitting more keys than necessary to enter a score.... I don't really know for sure since I could not compare the two directly. I got the impression from the Salesman that BridgeMate had less keystrokes than BridgePad, but could not verify these directly. I would suggest that you TEST both out before buying either. Make sure that they integrate seamlessly with ACBLScore. Remember that many bridge players are not computer savvy, so a learning curve of more than one round is too long. The screen keystokes for North should be self-evident with little instruction. Only the most tech-phobia North should need extensive help. AND COUNT THE KEYSTOKES to enter a score. Too many extra keystrokes is annoying, time-consuming and repititous. Especially a "Are you sure?" keystoke. That can get old real fast.

1) 4N over 2N is an quantitative NT raise asking opener to bid 6N with a max and pass with a min 2) Even if 4N was blackwood, it is not the questiion that responder wanted to ask 3) Responder has 13 HCP. 13+22 = 35 enuf for 6N. 13+24 = 37 enuf for 7N. So what responder wants to ask is "Bid 6N with min and 7N with max". That bid is 5N over 2N. Opener has 22 HCP and should open 2C and rebid 2N. KISS.

wait a minute... you ask partner for 3-card support and then ignore it and bid 3N? Not Me. KISS. If I ask for 3-card support and get a positive answer, I bid 4S. I agree with JDonn. That analysis that shows it is 50-50 that a 5-3 fit or 3N is better is for everybody else. For me, it is 90% that 4S makes more tricks on a 5-3 fit when I bid 3N.

5C. Why can't partner be 1354. About 16 HCP. Something like x KQx AQxxx AJxx. When partner asks me a question and I know the answer, I give it to him/her.

5D, not close. The idea that partner has hidden spade support in order to make an unagreed "values" dbl cannot be right. I would be very disappointed if partner showed up with 3s on this auction.

At first glance, 1C 1H 1S 4C is a strong club raise. But the argument, "Why not go thru 4th suit" is too strong, so it must be a splinter. HOWEVER, I don't think I would spring this on an unsuspecting partner.

Weak J/S are useful, but as you theorized, "Isn't that preempting opener, when opener has announced a good hand?" Yes, but not really. Not if you define the range of hands that the Weak J/S consist of. A narrow range of HCP and a narrow range of distributions. Then bidding 1, then 2, shows a different hand. Also, you should define opener's continuations. Which bids are forcing, competitive and invitational. You should also define when the weak j/s comes into play. 1m (p) 2M is the most obvious. But what about 1C (1D) 2H? How about 1H (p) 2S? How about 1C (X) 2S? What about 1S (p) 3C and 1S (2C) 3D? Let's say you define a weak j/s as 4-7 HCP with a 6 or 7 card suit. When responder bids 1 then 2, responder has a slightly better hand, 8-9 HCP. Opener is now well placed to determine partnership assets and contract in either situation. When responder bids a weak j/s, responder has likely bid the normal partnership final contract and made it more difficult for the opps to enter the auction competitively. However, there is a cost to the weak j/s. You no longer have the strong j/s or some other conventional meaning to the bids.

But partner made a successful psyche. (Bad, good, whose to say?) Of course, I might have a different opinion if the opps were beginners and the psycher was an expert. The problem seems to be the reactions to the psyche. If I was the "partner" and made this psyche, I don't think I would want to play with the poster anymore.