dburn

The only slight problem I have with Fred's arguments is that it would be quite tough for a beginner, or even an "intermediate" player (whatever that means) to understand why the South hand should not raise 2♥ to 4♥. "Partner has 16+ hcp, five diamonds and four hearts. I have 9 hcp and four-card heart support, so I'm going to bid game in our known 4-4 fit." "You don't have to do that - you can bid a forcing 3♥." "A what? Why is that forcing? Surely I would bid that with the same hand without the ace of clubs?" "Well, you see, there's a thing called lebensohl which..." [Exit beginner in direction of nearest chess club] Sure, we would all like to have the sequence 1♦-1♠-2♥-3♥-3♠ (a beautiful and delicate bid all by itself) - 3NT. But that kind of bidding is, in my view, for experts only. 1♦-1♠-3♦-3NT is how most intermediates and all beginners would bid, and who is to say they are wrong?

I think you should double. If you play that as 4-4 in the majors - well, I don't think you should play that way.

You dont need all those calculations. Assuming they always bid 6nt at the other table, it's just good enough without the ♣10. Only Just. Best Regards Ole Berg I'm not sure I understand this. Without the ♣10, you will make 7NT when West holds ♥Q, when East holds it singleton, and when East is void in hearts, all of which comes to about 57%. That would not be good enough odds if there were only one other table (at IMPs - BAM is a different matter). Experience suggests that it is not good enough odds at matchpoints either, unless playing in a small field of uniformly high standard. One could imagine a number of pairs agreeing hearts at an early stage in the auction, finding out that ♥Q is missing, and settling for a small slam in hearts. Without ♣10, I would be content with 6NT in most fields at matchpoints (the form of scoring specified in the original post). Even with ♣10, I still consider that many pairs will find it difficult to bid to 7NT, and I would estimate that 6NT making seven would score pretty well.

Oh, I see. East had thrown a winner (♣7) rather than a loser (any diamond except the queen) on the third round of spades. In that case, you had certainly better play a diamond, hoping that partner has the queen and wondering why it is that you need to save him from himself so often.

I don't quite see the point of this problem. If declarer has the ace and queen of diamonds he is cold; if he doesn't he is down. But I had better not shift to a diamond, just in case he has the ace and queen but doesn't work out how to make the hand. Playing a spade is sure to beat the contract whenever we can beat it, and may also beat it some of the times we can't.

Not much to add to preceding comments, but 5NT "pick a slam" is not silly. Maybe he will have ♠xx ♥AKJxxxx ♦x ♣AQx and be able to bid 6NT.

Sometimes, I have difficulty believing that posts here are for real. Playing with Ken Rexford and Adam Myerson as my team-mates the other day, my opponents held: ♠KQxx ♥Axxxx ♦AKxx ♣None ♠Axxxx ♥Kxx ♦x ♣AQJx They bid confidently to 7♠, a contract that needed a little good fortune. Spades were 2-2 though, which enabled them to circumvent the 4-1 heart break easily enough. On comparing scores, I was shocked to see that we had lost 2310 aggregate points on this deal. "What happened?" I enquired. "Well", said Myerson and Rexford in unison, "the auction started 1♥-2♣-2♦, and now we could never find our spade fit, so of course we played in 6♥ and the trumps broke 4-1." "You morons", I screamed - then awoke to find that it was all a dream. Or was it?

It's not just the opposite of the American English norm; it's a general although not strict rule that words get shorter but not longer. The American's a hustler, for he says so, And surely the American must know. He will prove to you with figures why it pays so Beginning with his boyhood long ago. When the slow-maturing anecdote is ripest, He'll dictate it like a Board of Trade Report, And because he has no time to call a typist, He calls her a Stenographer for short. He is never known to loiter or malinger, He rushes, for he knows he has a "date"; He is always on the spot and full of ginger, Which is why he is invariably late. When he guesses that it's getting even later, His vocabulary's vehement and swift, And he yells for what he calls an Elevator, A slang abbreviation for a lift. Then nothing can be nattier or nicer For those who like a light and rapid style Than to trifle with a work of Mr Dreiser As it comes along in waggons by the mile. He has taught us what a swift selective art meant By description of his dinners and all that, And his dwelling, which he says is an Apartment, Because he cannot stop to say a flat. We may whisper of his wild precipitation, That its speed is rather longer than a span, But there really is a definite occasion When he does not use the longest word he can. When he substitutes, I freely make admission, One shorter and much easier to spell: If you ask him what he thinks of Prohibition, He will tell you quite succinctly it is Hell. Ogden Nash anyways, adv. and conj. 1. adv. In any way, in any respect, at all. c1560 Bk. Comm. Prayer All those who are any ways afflicted... in mind, body, or estate. 1638 PRESTON Mount Ebal 10 As the Rudder of a ship, which turnes it any wayes. 1673 RAY Jrny. thro' Low Countries Ded. If either Catalogue or Observations prove any ways useful. 1794 SOUTHEY Wat Tyler III. i, Who may have been anyways concerned in the late insurrections. 1834 DE QUINCEY Cæsars Wks. X. 61 Nor was such an interference... anyways injurious. 2. advb. conj. In any case, at all events, anyhow. dial. or illiterate. Oxford English Dictionary

Double. Hard to imagine that my next call after this would cause me any difficulty at all - if partner bids, I will raise - but I will let you wait with that.

Passing it out may well get 11. Not all that long ago, the cool school in England thought (correctly) that it was a fabulous idea to play that after 2♣ - (overcall), pass showed values, because this made it more or less free to psyche a 2♣ opening. Value-showing passes after strong 1♣ and strong 2♣ openings, combined with takeout doubles from both sides, are almost the worst and most unmanageable "expert" convention to be foisted upon bridge-players everywhere (support doubles, except in the context of a strong club system, remain the worst). Still, we will be charitable and assume that Nigel may have misread the problem. It's easy to do. Maybe one day soon, when Fred and Uday aren't busy, we can have an auction template to go with the hand diagrams.

Desperate situations (such as playing matchpoints) call for desperate remedies. Bidding 3♣ on problem 1a is one of those, but the more I think about it, the more 3♣ has going for it. Many pairs simply do not know what do to when 1NT is overcalled at the three level: they don't know whether double is penalty or takeout; they don't know whether a three-level bid by responder is forcing or not; they don't know how to reach 3NT with any confidence when opener has three clubs to the queen. Of course, those who post messages on the BBO Advanced and Expert Class forum do know these things, and I would have to be very desperate indeed to bid 3♣ against any such. But in a pairs tournament where I don't know my opponents, I'd think 3♣ has a better than 50% chance of generating a decent score. As to the third problem, it's not maniacal in the least to pass out 2♥ doubled at any form of scoring and any vulnerability. The extent to which a double is "takeout" is more than somewhat vague, and solid partnerships will have defined the extent to which an ostensibly "takeout" double means: "Pass this only if you have them beaten in your own hand"; or "Pass this unless you have something clearly better to do, but don't rely on me to have them beaten in my own hand - if you do have something clearly better to do, I can at least tolerate whatever it is." Still and all, on the actual hand: ♠KQJxx ♥KJx ♦Qxx ♣xx I would probably bid 2♠ if my fourth-highest spade were the ten, thinking that this would be unlikely to get me a bottom or lose a lot of IMPs. But since I don't have ♠10, and since I have therefore close to no playing strength whatever, bidding 2♠ could just as easily get me a bottom as passing 2♥ doubled. By the same token, it could just as easily get me -500 as passing 2♥ doubled could get me -470 at IMPs. Maybe I should have a game with Justin sometime. As long as no one calls the director, that is.

1a) Would usually pass, but if in need of a top would consider 3♣, which might make life difficult for all concerned including me. 1b) Not much point in bidding now - even if they're going to play 4♠ from responder and we need a club lead from partner to score well, too much risk involved. 2) Would have bid 2♠ on previous round. Will certainly bid 3♠ now. 3) What would it have meant if I had doubled 2♥? If for penalty, then will pass confidently now - partner is presumably prepared for me to do this with a primarily defensive hand that did not make a penalty double of its own. If for takeout... well, I will still pass, but less confidently.

Geez, I'd hate for it to promise a rebid. I hate for it to promise a rebid even with an unpassed hand! If I have some random 9 or 10 count with 4-4 in the majors, I'd rather have the cue bid available than flip a coin and pick a major, and the hand simply isn't strong enough to do anything else. I don't feel a desperate need to force our side to the 3 level with half the points and an 8 card fit. Here's a question.... -P- - (1♣) - DBl - (P) 2♣ - (P) - 2♥ - (3♣) -P- Is the pass forcing? If 2C promised a rebid, then pass is forcing. It it didn't, then it isn't. Isn't this effectively the same question? I don't think so. Since the 2♣ bidder is a passed hand, then even if 2♥ were forcing because a rebid is promised, presumably doubler can pass if that rebid is 2♠ and his double won't make game opposite a passed partner. In such a case, the partnership is committed ("forced") only to 2♥ (since doubler can bid 2♦, advancer can bid 2♥ and doubler can pass it). This does not imply that simply because 2♣ promised a rebid, the partnership must bid above 3♣. As to whether 2♣ promises a rebid at all, there are some very good pairs who play that it does not even by an unpassed hand (the cue bid is either a limited hand that just wants to play in the right strain at the two level facing a minimum double, or some stronger hand). I am not familiar with the style myself, so I cannot comment on its effectiveness. But all questions of the type "Does X promise Y?" can really only be answered by "who is doing the promising, and to whom?"

I think that perhaps it may help to separate discussion of the actual hand from discussion of the legal principle involved. Some of jtfanclub's analysis above is, I confess, too abstruse for me, as is jdonn's notion that information may not correspond to that which is being informed about. Mind you, the latter may be a matter of semantics only. If I say to you "I have the ace of hearts" when in fact I do not have the ace of hearts, have I informed you that I have the ace of hearts?

I agree with the JLall's argument :) but go even further :) IMO, it doesn't matter what hand partner actually held; or what he was really thinking about; it matters only that (arguably) his hesitation suggested a call that turned out to be more successful than a non-suggested logical alternative. But I'm concerned about the jocular inference that the 6♣ bidder "cheated" :( I feel that we should be wary of such remarks, even in jest :( This is isomorphic to the idea that once partner hesitates, you cannot get a good result, "because" to hesitate is to cheat. This idea is the result of deeply muddled thinking, compounded by the notion that Bobby Wolff (and Bobby Goldman) must be wrong. The Laws do not ban thinking. What they ban is actions based on unauthorised information, and to rule that a player has used unauthorised information, one needs to establish that some transfer of information has taken place. To see this, consider: ♠AQ3 ♥K64 ♦QJ95 ♣A62 You open 1NT, 15-17. Partner thinks, then bids 2NT (natural and invitational). What call do you make? Now, I do not very much care how the super-theorists would evaluate this hand, nor do I care whether you have methods that distinguish some raise to 2NT from some other raise to 2NT. Nor do I want anyone to run a simulation based on how often this hand will make 3NT facing an average raise to 2NT. No doubt these are valuable contributions to theory, but I am not talking about theory - I am talking about the law. The Guthrie-Lall conjecture states that at this point, you cannot get a good result on this deal. Suppose you pass. Partner puts down a hand opposite which 3NT will make about 70% of the time, but on this occasion it fails. The opponents complain that partner's slow 2NT could have suggested that he had a marginal raise, so you ought to have ignored that putative suggestion, bid 3NT, and gone down. Suppose you bid 3NT. Partner puts down a hand with which he might very well have passed 1NT, but 3NT makes on a couple of finesses and a 3-3 break. The opponents complain that partner's slow 2NT could have suggested that he had a hand almost worth 3NT, so you ought to have ignored that putative suggestion, passed 2NT, and made three. Again, I want you to consider this argument without reference to your own personal tendencies towards "open aggressively, raise conservatively" or the converse. If you do so, I hope you will realise that the Guthrie-Lall conjecture is essentially no more than "if it hesitates, shoot it" and, more importantly, has nothing to do with what the law actually requires of players or of arbiters. As to what the law actually does require - well, as Ambrose Bierce remarked, "it has been defined by five hundred lawyers in three volumes each. So how can anyone know?" But as an exercise, consider this thought experiment: ♠AKQJ109876543 ♥2 ♦None ♣None Before you can open the bidding with 4NT, partner blurts out "this is the first hand tonight when I have had the ace of hearts". You, being hard of hearing, believe him to have blurted out "this is the first hand tonight when I haven't had the ace of hearts". RHO, who is actually the dealer, opens 6♦. What call do you make? You may say "I call the Director", but there is none. This is a private game among honourable people, and it is up to you to act in accordance with the law.

Yes of course. The fact that the offending side puts themselves in a no win position by cheating should not really disturb you. You need to be a bit careful about this sort of thing. The Law says this: After a player makes available to his partner extraneous information that may suggest a call or play, as by means of a remark, a question, a reply to a question, or by unmistakable hesitation, unwonted speed, special emphasis, tone, gesture, movement, mannerism or the like, the partner may not choose from among logical alternative actions one that could demonstrably have been suggested over another by the extraneous information. When a player has substantial reason to believe that an opponent who had a logical alternative has chosen an action that could have been suggested by such information, he should summon the Director forthwith. The Director shall require the auction and play to continue, standing ready to assign an adjusted score if he considers that an infraction of law has resulted in damage. Now, if 6♣ was a horrible contract, what information would you say that the player who bid it had received, and what information would you say that his partner had made available? If his partner had, instead of merely bidding slowly, been illegally communicating every detail of his hand via some electronic device (or, now that these are banned in the United States, by some tried and trusted method such as signalling with his fingers), the player would never have bid 6♣. So when he did bid it, he was clearly not acting on the basis of any actual information about his partner's actual hand. What offense, then, has the partnership committed, other than that of being lucky (which as yet the ACBL has not forbidden, although I understand that Larry Cohen is on the case)?

Did anyone ask the player (or the partnership) what the holder of this hand would be expected to bid over 3♦ with, say: ♠KQ876 ♥K7 ♦J2 ♣QJ65 Maybe the answer to that would have been 3♥, or 3♠, or 3NT, but I'm pretty sure that if I held that hand I would bid 4♣. If partner is prepared to bid 5♣ when this is the kind of hand I could have, I ought to bid 6♣ with the hand I actually do have.

Probably not, but more data required. What did West discard on the second round of diamonds, and what did it mean? If, for example, West discouraged in hearts, then East should not play ♠A on the first round of the suit whatever his hand. In such a case, it seems better to play East for ♠A, or for ♠J to fall in three rounds, or for West to have ♥A.

His chances of doing so are greatly increased if you bid hearts. 4th hand may double 2♥; if he does not, 2nd hand will lead a non-heart if holding a weak balanced hand and trying to find partner's suit. It would never occur to me to bid other than an immediate 3NT, at any form of scoring. Declarer is given a trick on the lead against 3NT far more often than against 4♠, and even if he is given a trick on the lead against 4♠, it may well be his ninth rather than his tenth.

Further discussion reveals that, in the opinion of at least one distinguished member of the WBFLC, what you are actually supposed to do is explain that you meant to open 1♥. Then, you are permitted to bid a natural and forcing 2♥ and the auction continues without further "rectification". Either the world has gone mad, or I have. The question of which is not the subject of a poll on this forum.

As I understand the matter, the thinking behind the progressive watering down of many Laws is that as far as is practicable, "normal bridge results" should be obtainable even by those incapable of realising whose turn it is to bid, or that spades outrank hearts, or that there is a requirement to follow suit when able to do so. Suppose that you have: ♠3 ♥AK10943 ♦6 ♣AKQ85 After mature consideration, you choose to open 1♥. An awkward silence supervenes, during which you observe two things fractionally before everyone else at the table points them out to you: (1) you are not the dealer; (2) your partner, who is, has opened 1♥ and your RHO has passed. Of course, had you been paying sufficient attention to the game, you would now bid Blackwood. But not under the new new Law 27 nor the old new Law 27 nor the old old Law 27 nor the Institutes of Justinian can you bid Blackwood, because partner will be barred and you will play there. What do you do? That was an easy question - naturally, you call the Director. Now for the more difficult question: what should he do? In particular, how should he respond to your plaintive query "Can I bid 2NT, game-forcing with heart support in our methods, and not have partner barred?" I should state in advance that the hand I have quoted above is not one that occurred in real life. Had it done, my RHO would doubtless have bid Blackwood anyway, thus barring his partner who would have put down this dummy: ♠KQ2 ♥QJ876 ♦KQ2 ♣73 Clubs would have broken 3-3 and I would have scored yet another bottom. My only consolation is that when you're as bitter and twisted as I am, you get twisted through 360 degrees often enough that for a short while, you turn out sweet and straight again.

At least the new proposed Law 27 should settle once and for all the question of whether it is better to play a four-card-major system or a five-card-major system. The former is vastly superior, because if you open 1♥ on such as ♠43 ♥KJ1052 ♦K32 ♣AJ5 without noticing that your partner has already opened it, you are allowed to correct to 2NT (Jacoby) playing four-card majors, but not playing five-card majors. Discussions with some members of the WBF Laws Commission indicate that the idea behind the new Law 27 is that you may without penalty (or "rectification" in the new Laws) replace an insufficient bid with any call you like, provided that your partner does not thereby receive any unauthorized information. Whether or not the actual wording of the Law embodies this idea is not clear to me, but if players and Directors follow the principle that "replacement calls should not convey UI", they may not go far wrong. However, players should be aware that it is not at all in their interests to reveal why they made the insufficient bid in the first place, either before the Director is called or afterwards. To do so will in most cases convey UI to partner, and jeopardize their position with regard to possible rectification.

I would most certainly not touch this suit for as long as possible. Which book should I read to get this right more often? The encyclopedia? It happened to be your trump suit in a small slam. In those circumstances, you do not really have the option to avoid touching it for very long at all. If you don't want it to be your trump suit in a small slam very often, I would not recommend the Encyclopaedia. Instead, I would recommend almost all of the methods advocated here on an almost hourly basis by people who understand bidding theory, and would no doubt have been able to ask at the two level of the hand that had five to the queen whether or not it also had the jack. Regrettably, when the deal arose, such mehods were not in use.

No one said it was easy. Whereas transitivity is intuitive (if A is taller than B is and B is taller than C, then A must be taller than C), non-transitivity is distinctly counter-intuitive (if A always beats B at tennis, and B always beats C at tennis, then A might always lose to C at tennis). Yet Justin had it exactly right: rock always beats scissors, scissors always beat paper, and paper always beats rock - there are no "joint winners". The Marquis de Condorcet attempted to show that democracy was possible in spite of this; it was left to Kenneth Arrow to show that democracy was actually impossible in theory, and to George W. Bush to show that it was also impossible in practice.

Suitplay is a remarkable program that can help players at all levels to improve their handling of many common situations that arise at the table. It assumes, as did Roudinesco in his magnum opus the Dictionary of Suit Combinations that the defenders will play optimally, false-carding when necessary and presenting you with as many losing options as they can. Certain apparently simple combinations "break" it by causing it to run out of memory before being able to "solve" a combination completely; interestingly, it does not "know" how to play Q82 A1063 to best advantage, nor will it cope when the six is replaced by the five, but when the six is replaced by the four, it can just about manage. Exactly why this should be I do not yet know, and this is something of a humbling experience. Only the other day, several very good players (much better than I) were heatedly debating the correct handling of this simple combination: A102 Q6543 for four tricks. One was adamant that you should start with a low card to the ten; another equally convinced that you should start with a low card to the queen, then finesse the ten if the queen loses to the king. Two others were of the opinion that it did not matter; both lines were equally good. Sizable wagers were struck, and I was appealed to for a verdict. It surprises me not a little that very many of the world's truly great players do not know the technically correct answer to questions such as this, nor do they care. Of course, it may be they know that the percentage difference between various reasonable lines is often negligible, and they rely on their judgement and table presence rather than their knowledge of the odds against optimal defence when they decide how to play a suit or a hand. Certainly, one of the players involved in the discussion was convinced that he would unerringly select the winning line at the table, and "I don't care what the odds say." But as an exercise for those whose judgement is not quite as good as Zia's, try these questions without artificial aids. Assuming that you have adequate entries to both hands, and that loss of tempo or control is not an issue: What is actually the best line for four tricks with this combination, assuming you are playing against robots who will defend correctly in perfect tempo? What is the best line for three tricks? At matchpoints, why would you not follow any of these lines, and what line would you follow instead?