SoTired

p (3H) 3S (4H) p (p) ? Anybody for 5C? Or only one risky bid per hand.

Are you serious? Smart ass sarcasm in this forum is very unhelpful. If you open an ordinary 19 with 2N, then your 2N range is actually 19-21. The rest follows logically. Since you were willing to open an ordinary 19 when the range was 20-21, why not an ordinary 18 when the range is 19-21? I was just continuing the logic that the 2N bidder laid down. I was serious, not sarcastic. I was trying to show how the 2N with an ordinary 19 is not good bridge. I was trying to be helpful. I was also trying to explain how some would not learn anything from bad boards caused by it. I will not try to help again.

So then your 2N opening is 19-21, not 20-21. And if it is 19-21, sometimes you might stretch and open an 18 with 2N. Or a really good 17. So you open 2N with 18 and it goes pass out, down 3, while everybody else is in 1C making 1 or 2. No Problem. Chalk it up to bad luck and move on to the next deal.

4H has to be forward going with no wasted club honors. key-card for me. Why can't partner be ♠AKQxx ♥Kxx ...?

3H instead of dbl sure sounds like a non-forcing 6-card suit to me. Partner has to have some values. I have to bid 3H now. 3D should show 5.

I pass with fear. Both 4H and 5C could be a better contract if partner can't come to 9 tricks without giving up the lead. However, any bid we make might be taken as a slam try. (OK, I really have not discussed this with any of my partners, but isn't it a possibility?) Plus, our ♦K is probably opposite shortness and likely worthless.

I agree with Jdonn. The 1M-1NF-3N is supposed to show 15-17 HCP and 6 solid M, not a 20 HCP semi-balanced hand. If responder has a couple of hearts and an short suit, or a weak 3-card raise, responder may have decided that 4H is better than 3N. I was taught that responder shows a 3-card limit raise in the 1M-1N-3M auction, which should be the same for 1M-1N-3N, by q-bidding a minor suit.

4 or 5C. Never pass. It is my opinion that freaks like this is what decides world championships. Everybody knows how to bid normal games and slams with normal hands, but it is hands like this where nobody has any bidding rules nor experience that really differentiates a great player from another great player.

I was playing with a novice partner against 2 pros. She dealt and opened 1H (2C) 2H by me, (3C) ... long pause... 6H (p) p ... long pause... (7C) X... down 3, which was a successful sac against our cold 6H contract. After the hand, I asked the pro why he bid 7C and he said, "She looked like an honest lady to me."

I was going to post something about B/I/A should always raise and leave bidding 1N with 3-card support to the experts, but I see how JDonn would raise, too.

Always! And hardly anyone gets nasty to a cheerful person. You'd be surprised at how many tense situations I've seen defused by people acting civil, cheerful, and humorous, but assertive.

Habitual Jerks are a problem. As Trinidad mentioned, they can destroy a club. They continually intimidate opps, make their own self-serving rulings, and chase away newer and/or shy players. However, public humiliation is not a good solution. That, too, will scare away players. And it will alienate any friends of the Jerk (they usually have a few, don't laugh. And the jerk will spread terrible rumors about your club). But you have to remain in control. I think the best response is a cheerful, "You can't refuse to play boards just because you are mad at your opps, deary." "OK, I'll let you do it this one time, and I won't report you to the <federation> like I am supposed to, but I have to give you zeros for those 2 boards and next time, I will report you. Please try to play nicely with the other children. Toodles."

I voted 3H, but 2H is still a preempt that prevents LHO from opening at the 1-level, but allows you a better chance to bid diams later. Depending on the auction, either may work better. So to me, neither 2H or 3H is "wrong". 1H sucks as it gives opps too much room. Plus, if we bid diam later, partner may play us for a strong 2-suiter :)

2C for me. To me, this is NOT a 2-suited hand. It is a one suited hand. I do not want to play in a 4-4 heart fit. If you play in hearts on a 4-4 fit rather than diam in a 7-1 fit and either suit breaks badly, the play of the hand will go poorly. Also, this is a 3-loser hand. If partner has as little as ♦Qx, you want to be in game, and if partner has only that, s/he may pass out 1D. As a matter of fact, we could pass out 1D when 6D is cold.

A winner of the National IMP pair event told me he thought MP was more skillful. The reason: To win a MP event, you need to play good bridge with few errors. To win an IMP event, you need to play good bridge with few errors and get lucky. No matter how well you play, you can't win an IMP event without luck. Even a multi-session IMP event requires luck to win. And bad luck will kill you in an IMP event. For example: A difficult to bid 80% slam may cost you 15-20 IMPS if it goes down. If you are playing well, it may take you 7-10 hands to make up for that bad luck.

I might have opened a weak 2D, if that was available

In an expert panel from several years ago, this hand and similar auction came up. Steve Robinson recommended a Neg Dbl because the hand is short in opp's suit and must take action.

I think you miscounted our tricks on a 4-1 spade break. 3s+2h+2c = 7. After taking 3s, the opps are getting the rest. We won't get a diam trick because the opps have 3h+2d+1c. (I am sure LHO has a diam honor, otherwise RHO would have found a bid over 1S with 13 HCP.) But that is OK, because then 4S also goes down 2. If we take a spade finesse and it loses, we go down 3 when most others are in 4S down 1. So... Playing for 3-2 break when right get top, when wrong get avg Playing for 4-1 break when right get top, when wrong get zero. Seems like an easy decision to me....

I agree that South should pass and North made a mistake by bidding 2D instead of X. But I want to make a point: A negative dbl by South over 2C is not that poor a bid. Let's say the bidding went 1S (2C) X (p); 2D (p) 2H. What does South have? Since South did not bid an immediate 2H, South does not have 10 HCP, so 2H is to play. Since North has bid 2 suits, South needs a 6-card heart suit to want to play in hearts. But AKxxx is not that bad. 2N instead really sucks. Avoid NT with misfits. Especially when 2N would be an overbid. A 5-2 heart would be preferable. When you play misfits in NT, you always get stuck in the wrong hand and end up leading away from honors as the defense gets trick after trick, always putting you back in the wrong hand. No fun at all.

Good explanation, Marlowe. BTW, 2H does not necessarily show a min opener, since responder promises a rebid. When responder bid 3S, game-forcing, the auction is forced to 4S. Look at opener's hand. Opener has some extra strength (about an extra king). So bidding 4S would show nothing extra and nothing more to say. But opener DOES have extra and does have more to say. It costs nothing to bid 4D on the way to 4S. This bid is called a "cue bid". Modern bidders cue bid 1st or 2nd round controls (ace, king, singleton or void), cheapest first, below game. The older standard style was cue-bid 1st round control (aces or voids) first and 2nd round controls later. This proved awkward and unnecessary on most hands since you have Blackwood to determine whether you have enough aces. So 4D says, "I have a control in diam and no control in clubs since I skipped over a 4C bid and at least some interest in slam." Since responder also has extra strength, control of the club suit, and the diam cue bid allays responder's worry about 2 quick diam losers (opener bid hearts so presumably has at least the king), responder can bid slam....If your side has enough aces. Even if not playing RKC, responder should bid blackwood to ensure opener has at least one ace before bidding 6S.

After 1S, 2H, we have sound knowledge of what Dbl, 2S, 3C, 3D and 3H mean. So let's pour all our invite+ hands into one bid: 2N. We define that as an invitational hand with not a clear-cut suit. Opener responds by bidding the cheapest suit in which opener will NOT accept an invitation in. This solves some of our problems. But it allows us to make a bid with either clubs or diams or quasi-heart stoppers.

down 2? ♦A, ♥AK, ruff ♥ in dummy, ♠AK, Down 1. Am I missing something?

me 2

sheesh, what was that? a dozen extra posts to justify calling someone stupid. There is no justification. If you don't want to bother clarifying your English, don't. But why spend so much effort "proving" that your silly shorthand description was clear? So why pound on a person? That is just plain rude and unncessary. I know a world-class bridge player who can't cut-and-paste properly to save his life. I know a person who can have a one hour phone conversion and repeat it almost verbatim the next day, point-by-point, yet can't remember Ogust. Actually, I would call someone stupid who cannot realize that they may not have been clear to all readers.

Justin, was it really necessary to insult a confused reader? Was it that hard to clarify: 1D p 1N p p X XX 2C p ? Or 1D p 1N p p X XX 2C p p X p p ?