coyot

Sure there are many. There are also many, where you will go down a million. I'm not a math wizard, but I think that the odds for a GOOD game are not worth the risk here. Sure, partner could have 7-8 HCP in major suits - but any minor wastage dooms you. Major suit breaks tend to be bad for you as well. Even doubleton Ace in trump suit does not save the day. Maybe having singleton club and doubleton diamond would make the hand worth bidding - but here, everything speaks against bidding.

I just finished Bill Root's one - and it's a pretty good book. I'd say a must for everyone who considers himself advanced. A chapter or two may seem obvious but then it becomes interesting. Not too repetitious, yet clear and understandable.

Pass. Max 22 HCP, no need to get involved on 3rd level unless partner has VERY good hand - and in that case, I am sure he will reopen 3♣.

And I don't think I would have reached 4♠ at the table :) - and it is not hindsight. If I want to open light in 3rd seat, it is safer to open 1♠ - we play Two Way Reverse Drury so partner bids 2♦ showing 4card limit raise and I correct to 2♠. The hand IS substandard opener, no doubt about that. Partner, with extremely good hand, may still bid a new help-suit with this shape - and we'll sign off in 3♠.

If you decide to open light in 3rd seat with such a bad hand (shape, no values in bid suit), pass the 1♠ response. I see absolutely no need to raise. Your partner is a passed hand. What are the chances of you missing a 22 HCP game if you're balanced? You have the boss suit, so you can afford to pass - and compete later. West, with his maximum hand and supposedly valuable QJ♦ is right to bid game.

Our system: 1♦-1♥ - (better minor - F1 ) 2♣-2♠ - 5-4 or 4441 - GF 2NT-3♥ - stopper - 6card or good 5card. 3NT - pass (no interest, denies doubleton honor in hearts). What does 1♣ opener mean in your system? highly strange with 5 diamonds...

Agree with the slower approach. If partner happens to have a 18HCP hand on diamonds, he might even have a singleton heart and we've just broken our neck by jumping to game. With 4HCP, it is very unlikely that 1♥ will be passed around (and if it will, we're in the right contract). If partner now bids his strong diamonds, I show 2♠ (and this shows 5-4 majors and at least 4HCP. If he bids 1♠ (forcing for one round in our system), I raise by 3♣ - and he will have a good idea of my hand.

Maybe it would be worth saying aloud what your ideas about the bridge skill scales are. We have the Novice - Beginner - Intermediate - Advanced - Expert - World Class style on BBO. Here it is shrunk to beg+ind - adv+exp. What should be the learning curve of bridge? My perception is and always was: Novice: a few weeks into the game. The concepts of tricks, bidding, play and scoring covered Beginner: first 6-12 months (assuming 1-2 evenings a week). Begins with a largely natural bidding system, Stayman, Transfers and Blackwood being high-tech tools. Unless he started with a good book, uses Blackwood with a void :). Unless he memorized his bidding system, he is quite often unsure whether a particular non-jump bid would be forcing or not. 8-ever and 9-never are the core rules of his play. Intermediate: Learns that bidding is not about points, but about tricks. Moves to a little more sophisticated bidding system - two-suited overcalls, inverted minors, conventional major raises. Discovers that there are sometimes better ways to the contract than a simple finesse. Starts hating opponents for leading trumps as he likes crossruffs. May occasionally realize a squeeze, but hardly KNOW it :) This phase IMHO lasts 1-2 years. Learns LOTT slowly. Advanced - Feels at home within his bidding system, adds a few gadgets to it. Elimination and endplay become his daily bread. He sees opportunities for dummy reversals, really understands LOTT, can reach most of slams safely. Reads narrow-subject books - and I think that this is the right time to start learning squeezes. Advanced bridge can last for the rest of your life (I doubt I will ever feel like an expert player...) I would agree with Roland that to move to a higher stage, you should have "mastered" the stage below - and, things I imagine to be intermediate bridge are, for me at least, far below squeezes in complexity. Another way to look at it. How would you expect "intermediate player" to fare in tourneys? I would expect him to regularly defeat beginners, be on par with intermediates and occasionally finish above 55%. Another way to look at it. Go to your bridge club on a good day, when the field lacks total beginners and the top experts. Try to mentally rate the players you see and know to play "serious" bridge for a few years - and ask yourself, if the intermeidate ones are skilled enough at counting hands to be able to visualize and execute a squeeze. I don't think that you will think "oh, this one could do it" unless you at the same time think "he's a good player, certainly advanced..." And, third way to look at it: If you think squeezes are intermediate bridge, can you name enough topics for advanced and expert to warrant two more categories? I don't think so. For me, squeezes are advanced bridge (and closer to expert than to intermediate)

I had in mind an intelligent sharing of blacklists. I would not just throw a list of names and tell you "ban these from your tourneys if you trust mu judgement. I imagine that a simple form of player name | offence 1 reported by TD X| offence 2 reported by TD Y ... would do fine. Every TD involved could have access to this list and use it at his discretion, deciding which of the offenders he considers too bad to be allowed in his tourney. And I assume that the TDs involved would be observed by the others when it comes to strange rulings etc. I believe that this would give us a tool that would contribute to better quality tourneys for the players.

Let's start a debate about BBO forums rules and policies. Last time I checked, there were written rules and unwritten policies (which are enforced quite well). The unwritten policy says that there is to be no public humiliation - which means that when somebody i.e. screws up a contract bidding or play, you're not allowed to post any details here. I happen to disagree with the policy because I think that the contract has been already made public via myhands, but I admit that if the cause of the wrong result/bid was a mistake or lack of skill, then noone should bring it out and cause potential shame to the author. But I would certainly want the unwritten policy changed so that it applies only on humiliation for mistakes - and NOT on humiliation for intentional wrongdoings. In other words, if somebody abuses other players, TDs etc intentionally, I think they DESERVE to be mentioned aloud. Example: BL case has been discussed publicly and no one complained, although it certainly is humiliating for them. A case of a BBO TD adjusting his bad results has been mentioned here and promptly censored by Ben on the basis of unwritten rules. Sorry, Ben, but I think that this is not fair! Allowing BL to be humiliated and protecting the rights of some unknown individual who has abused his TD powers in the worst possible sense is just plain WRONG! I would very much like to have the unwritten rules turned to written - and I would want them to match the needs, interests and wants of the readers. I.e. start a poll that will ask the participants of these forums what they want censored. This thread might have been just a mistake of a beginner, not an intentional abuse - and then it is right to protect his identity to prevent humiliation. The other case a few days back was definitely not a mistake ;)

Often, the table with most kibitzers is the first table of any tournament that is ending right now, with most people just killing time here, not really kibitzing ;) - so if such a feature were implemented, please allow a possibility to filter tourney tables out.

Tough luck... BTW, what about forming a TD group (passworded message board) where we will share the offenders? (And I don't mean an official TD group so that you would know that being rude in one tournament gets you a ban to any tournament with the same name - I mean unofficial, but much wider group. I would be very interested in knowing the names of all the above offenders in order to PREVENT them from entering my tournaments, EVER.

Playing spades from the top seems to lose against any KQxx (heart forces) and also to any 3:2 break IF clubs dont behave (for the same reason - if I lose the tempo twice when drawing trumps, opps will force me with hearts twice. So I would finesse spades twice, hoping for A♦ with LHO. Oh, wait, there is a better way! Finesse in spades, ruff a heart, play a diamond to the king - and now exit with a heart, discarding a diamond from hand. You need doubleton or tripleton spade honor with RHO and that's all! - cross with ace of clubs and finesse again... Or not? Is that worse than other variants? It only needs the Hx or Hxx in spades with RHO - no clubs or diamonds split/placement required...

[hv=n=s9hd109752c52&w=sh1074da8cq103&e=s7hqj8dck974&s=sqhak9dcaj86]399|300|[/hv] N leads: DT C4 H9 taking the diamond ace now cannot hurt - and either a heart or a club return will lead to declarer scoring his 3 honor tricks and two trumps on crossruff, losing two more clubs in the end. There is simply no way declarer could run his diamonds UNLESS the defender plays another diamond after taking the ace. Any other exit is perfectly OK, a passive small heart best because it is risk-free compared to clubs. Declarer can discard a club, cash two more winners, ruff a club in hand, but there is no way for him to get rid of J8 in clubs. Leading a small club could possibly cost a trick as it drives out the king, another club is discarded on the heart ace and then a diamond played from hand and east's last trump overruffed. If the declarer now correctly leads low club, his jack will be high with a heart entry - so in this case it would be +1. But I don't think any defender will choose a lead like this when he SEES the AK♥ bared in dummy. So I would adjust 4♠. (Declarer does not deserve more after after so CARELESSLY losing the spade two in first trick :-))

If you open the example bidding system and use "view frame source" from context menu, you will see what XML is about. The second line in the source tells the browser to use a .xsl stylesheet, which is the "application" that extracts and shows data from the source itself. (XSL styhesheet basically tells the browser how to produce HTML from the XML data - which items to show where etc. Now, I don't want to criticise the system, but the page looks like no other bidding system I've ever seen - and seems much harder to comprehend - and I think that this is partially due to the XML organization, which rigidly pushes the data into a tree structure. XML has some merits, definitely, but if you have a look at that page, you must agree that it is not something you would want to use and print to learn a bidding system quickly.

Not exactly true, Hog. Second generation of HTML is XHTML. XML is a generic markup language, which basically allows you to define any element structure - and is therefore used for data representation. You basically define which elements your document may contain, as you wish, but it has nothing to do with HTML. If you decide to store your bidding system in XML, you will have to give every reader an application that will "understand" your particular XML document. (That is, every XML parser can extract the data, but no generic parser would be able to make any special sense out of it, so you might as well use plain text or HTML).

Against NT, there really is no need to lead the 10. It will broadcast to everyone what your holding is - and, truely, what are your plans with the suit? You are hoping that partner has at least one honor in it - and in that case, it will hardly matter what your lead is! If you lead club 5, you're telling partner that you're leading away from 4th honor (most likely) - and be it king or queen, his reactions will be the same in every case! Probably the only situation where leading high matters is when the dummy holds Kxx and partner AJx. In any other combination I can think of, the lead does not matter in the positive sense - but it CAN matter if partner has 8x(x) in the suit and nothing more. The lead of the ten will then most likely tell everything to the declarer and allow him to guess the suit correctly, or to endplay you... So, while it is not a poor lead, leading small is IMHO slightly better. The chance for clubs being 4333 is less than 50%, despite your flat shape. The combination with Jxx needs the 10 as lead only with partner having the king. If partner has Ax or Axx, it does not matter. If he has Ax, declarer will have K8xx and always score 2 tricks. If he has Axx, declarer will always score one trick only. If he has Axxx, declarer will always score 1 one trick only as well. I don't know what is the percentage of hands where it will be wrong to lead 10 from this, but if dummy as J8xx and partner has one club honor, that's definitely one of them. If partner has Jx, that is another one. So, I would lead small, hoping to find partner with at least one honor and hoping that it will not be one of the losing combinations - and my guy feeling is that there aren't too many of them.

You're welcome. It was about 30 mins of googling and a few hours of enhancements (spread around a day or so of translating the system to english, correcting errors, cleaning the HTML etc...) The current version has some problems (limey reported a javascript error in MSIE when clicking on Print Version - under win98, my copy of the same msie version (6.0.2800.x) does not complain (on XP). The biggest problem is that it produces grossly invalid HTML, abusing duplicate element names, proprietary attributes etc. I will think about possible workarounds. THe idea with a ton of elements with the same name has it's merits - the code to handle it is then pretty small - and you don't have to worry about duplicate names for multiple elements added over time... I'm not sure there would be a clean workaround. I'll be grateful for any corrections, enhancements and suggestions that will make it easier to use etc.

With the knowledge that my p does not have an opener, I will reopen only if the risk of going -2 is not any great. My point was that partner cannot EXPECT a 5card. How do you mean "few outside values"? If I happen to have AQxxx in spades, I don't need much more to overcall 1♣ against a passed partner... If I happen to have xxxxx in spades, I need 8 good HCP to stick my neck out in VUL against a passed hand. But in either case, the bidding so far tells me that my 1♠ bid will most likely push opps to 2nd level (and tell partner which suit to lead) - and if not, I'm ready to go down 1.

Hello, folks :) I rarely happen to produce anything useful on demand, but some things I created for myself might be of use to others. IF you happen to be a system freak (who is not content with the bidding system he plays unless there is a lot of personal touch to it) OR play generally the same system with a few different partners and they each refuse to play some of your favorite gadgets OR want to share your system over the web and allow people to modify it, you might be interested in visiting My Webpage. If you follow the link to English version of the system and LIKE what you see (meaning the form, not the actual contents), click on back and read a bit more about what and how it does. For those who are either lazy to look or not interested yet: The system is a SA 2/1GF (fairly uninteresting) in a HTML/Javascript shape that allows you to hide/show parts by simply clicking, then clean it for printing. This might seem unremarkable apart from the fact that it should behave the very same way when you download the zipped version onto your computer, should work on any platform with any browser (hopefully, tested in FF 1.0.6 and MSIE 6.something) AND it allows you to (quite easily, by modifying one file) make your permanent "preset" of hidden/shown parts. Now, I'm not trying to make you play my system - feel free to rip the contents away and use the javascript engine for your own system. Also, if you ever happen to be out of your mind so much to be interested to play with me, this would be the system of my choice :) (There is one longish part left in Czech in the English version - defense against 2♦ multi. It is quite sophisticated and I've never had the time to learn it :), so I did not bother with translating). I hope that somebody will find the HTML/Javascript useful for some purpose, may it not necessarily be sharing a bidding system.

I would think that same-level preference bids do not have to guarantee any extra strength - and if so, then reversing guarantees much more. 1♦ with a 2♥ reopen evidently pushes partner pretty high, while a 2♣ rebid with can be done even with 5-4 and a good minimum. I don't see why a lower-suit rebid should be stronger than repeating ♦ - on the contrary, a hand with 5-4 in minors will be generally safer to rebid than a hand with 6 in one minor and the same HCP. 1NT should ALWAYS be strong :).

If you bid Exclusion BW and it denies any lower Exclusion BW, it is easy, because the 4♠ bid and 7♥ says that you have 13 tricks outside spades, so your partner with the ace can freely correct to 7NT.

If not prearranged, why would Buratti have paid attention to the 3 fingers? Purely coincidental? Roland Since three fingers are VERY odd, you could use such a signal and hope it catches partner's attention. Once he notices it, he does not need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what it is about! Yes, if the count to be passed is four or five, this is much harder. So I would be inclined to believe that this signal was passed and acted upon - and it's oddity seems to make it possible that it was not prearranged.

I would be content with 7 of a red suit, where the bidding is fairly easy (but the NT can be bid as well from there) 1♦-1♥ 4♠*-4NT* 7♥-7NT 4♠ Exclusion BW for hearts, 4NT showing one keycard. 7♥ to play, 7NT as well. Of course, 7NT would be down one if the opener happened to be 85 or 76 in reds :-)

Well, let me tell you that these hands DO appear. If you have 15 HCP and partner has 6-7 HCP, he will 95% of the time pass your transfer acceptance - and yet, the only thing you need to reach a good game is to meet your worthless doubleton with partners Axxx or xxxx. The game will be there, with odds good enough to be bid, and yet the partner will have absolutely no reason to try, since the 9card fit (that is 100% from your side of table) has much lower odds in his point of view, certainly not worth risking a distaster of 3NT with 23-24 HCP and no fit... In other words... how many times it happened to you as the responder to think "oh my, if I only were sure that we have a fit, then I could invit, but what if he has a lousy doubleton? I'll be then lucky not to lose 3 tricks with KJ9xx :blink:. The 9card upgrades the two-hand potential GROSSLY! 1) Losers in trump suit minimized 2) Extra entry to developed tricks 3) Ability to ruff even if opps lead trumps early 4) Chance for doubleton 5) Chance for ruff'n'sluff endplay I don't have the tools/time to do any simulation, but I would be suprised if it turned out that jumping to three with minumum and 4card against a transfer is losing bridge in long term. (Please, some sane bridge judgement included in the simulations. I will NOT do the jump with Qxx-AKQx-Qxx-Qxx, of course! Any 3-4-3-3 shape should be excluded unless it contains 3-4 Aces/Kings.)