Tomi2

MixedTeams 2011 in Poznan, played with a young and even more unexperienced Partner than me. First of all in the swiss stage we needed a miracle to qualify for the KO, we had two good sessions in the end and so we got to the KO, unseeded, and played 32 boards against the italian stars. Madala-Rimsted was their anchor pair, Ferraro, Sementa, Duboin's wife and a sponsor played one segment each. After finishing the last board (3NT+1) I had a look at the vugraph operator's screen, we were leading by one imp and Madala had a start that looked like two overtricks... but my teammates found a good switch to scare him and make him cashout for just... the next round we lost by the amount of a TD decision/appeal that could well have been decided in our favor :( next would have been the Zimmermann team in the quaterfinals ;)

I am quite confortable with Tomiwood responses to the keycard ask :rolleyes: 1st step: 0, 2 or 4 Keycards, next step asks the trumpqueen 2nd step: 1KC with OR 3KC w/o OR 5 with trump queen 3rd step: 1KC w/o OR 3 with OR 5 w/o trump queen after the 2nd and 3rd step, because of using kickback and minorwood we can ask for kings below 5suit very often additionally we gain the 4th response step for "I don't have too many keycards but I do like my hand very much" for example if you have a weak hand with no keys but a void and long trumps or some outside tricksource partner can not see jumps in Tomiwood show "enough keycards and a specific void in this suit" 5suit signoffs after all steps are "pass or correct" same as in 14-30 when you sometimes cant read the 1 or 4... actually because of showing the queen directly I had fewer spots where i could not read partners resonse compared to the 1 or 4 accidents. A player with 2 keycards and now trump queen in his hand must be cautious because he might not be able to read partners response

2S = to play for me, so that's the hand for...

I am used to play the other round, partner will be on lead and 5 clubs invites him to lead a club, to compeate till 6 dias if they outbid us, or even further but not to pass... sry guys, i am dealt 9 suits in 4th position too seldom so I have the agreement that such bids are with fit

first they must survive Bocchi-Madala... what a match in the round of 32, Hamman-Bocchi, who played so many bermuda bowl finals in the last 20 years

this would require the player must be able to decide what to do over: pass, double, 4nt, 5clubs and 5dias in 10 seconds

to the last sentence: why should 1♠-3NT = something aritfical, say "club splinter" be alerted and 1♠-4♣ = dia-splinter not?

disagree to the first two parts of your statement. Not everybody uses the stop cards in Europe as the rules want us to do because many are correctly thinking that the rules are not good on this point. In non competitive auctions for example imo there is no use of the stop card, for example 1♠-2♠-4NT, or take pass - 1nt - pass - 3nt... why spending 10seconds here and maybe get penalties for playing slow later, while in other copmetitive auctions with no skip bid stop cards would be usesfull but aren't in use, for example stop 4♠ - (5♥) - thhhiiiinnnk - double/pass. the border "skip bid" for (non-)use of the stop card is as randomly as "no alert above 3nt"

new try then :) Piekarek-Smirnov

deleted - misread the post

what would you think is the reason that more open players went down here compared to seniors and la... women? when I watched the board as it was played in vug, around half of the tables finished it with kinda 50% made for the guys and 75% made for the other competitions. of course it might be, that "worse defenders" misdefended, but actually ALL tables played it from north and ALL got the spade lead, and I can't imagine any non-open had more chance to "misdefend" (e.g. throwing a dia) here. Or am I wrong?

ask Michael Gromöller from Germany, he runs the German bridge camp for Juniors and people who feel like juniors, like himself ;)

so, after winning last years BB prediction contest I am first again? goooo Monaco and stoooop the rest :) maybe I should become professional bridge bookmarker :)

did I miss something or did nobody mentioned Kaplan/Rubens? everytime I go down in a slam or a game that was not percentage I see I had at least 0.5 KR points less then I expected (in fact I overbid) KR is like a miracle to me, its always right

hmm, after leading 72-0 halway against Poland their plan seems to be to win every match 25-0 :)

Nearly nobody opens 1dia on 4 cards in Poland, that idea to open minors an an american style is, as fat as I know, only published in Jassems english translation of WJ05, the polish one uses the normal and good approach to open 1 club on the balanced hands even with 4 dias. A reason, why Martens' idea sometimes fails is some other: (1♣) - pass - (1♦) - ??? pass 1M - pass - (2M) - ??? now its your turn, you have a strong hand and forgot to bid in your first turn. Say the bidding has already reached 2♠ and you now know they hold 7 to 9 spades with 16 to 26 hcp, lucky you... or: 1♣ - ?? pass - any weak jump - pass pass - ?? now you can express that you want to enter the auction because you hold more points than the opener but have much less room to do so. even after 1♣-1♦-1♥ and now 2nd seat is on, its not clear if the auction will end (undoubled) or if they correct to a better (worse) contract and you get the chance to bid again. Playing double in that seat as "either 1 heart doubled will be the best contract for us or we better take it out" is also not so easy...

noooo 1NT rebid is alyways 18-20 in all polish club systems. the question is if you bid 1H or 1S but not 1NT...

I will be suprised if you find somebody betting on the Ladies here...

I do play forcing NT including GF balanced hands as well, but we took out any fit of 1NT, no weak - no limit - no GF hands with fit possible. This works well after having discussed some sequences to show the strong balanced, esp. combined with gazilli, where one can find out lots about openers hand. this hand would work well in my structure 1NT = no fit, natural range or stronger unlimited 2clubs = 3+ card fit, invitational or stronger 2red = 5 card suit, GF 2spades, 3dia and 3 spades = several raises of spades 2NT = GF with own clubs (so compared to standard methods the clubshowing 2 clubs and the fitshowing 2nt are reversed) the given hand is an easy 2club bid, partner limits his hand on the next turn and i can set up a gameforce with 2nt suggesting a balanced hand. Further bidding will be natural to locate a possible side-fit, and the values for slam

similar story as the others, world junior teams 2008, bidding went with east dealing, all vuln. N E // S(me) W -- 1♣ // pass - 1♦ 2♦ 2♥... // 1club was strong, 16+, 1dia was any POSITIVE, GF 2dia was either diamonds or both majors, 2 hearts was natural with his 16+ now i looked ad the auction and the bidding cards of east have moved because they were so slippy, instead of 1club and 2 hearts i saw only the 2 hearts bid, so the auction looked like my screenmate opened 1dia, partner overcalling 2dia = spades + hearts or clubs, opp bids 2 hearts, so i raise to 3 spades, get doubled and go for 1700 :(

OK my try Open: 1Monaco 2Italy 3Netherlands 4Israel 5Poland 6Sweden Ladies: 1France 2England 3Netherlands 4Poland 5Sweden 6Italy Seniors: 1Poland 2France 3Germany 4Italy 5Denmark 6England

for me ♠7 can be the clue, if its a hones ud count signal, then west knows about declarers weak spades and can open them

in last weeks mixed championships my partner alerted my 3rd hand non vuln 1nt opener as: any random crap hand but may accidently be 15-17 balanced she was sooo right, I upgraded my j9xxxx holding in clubs by 7 points. back to the hands given, I downgrade the first one, but not the 2nd one. quick check on KR K&R (AJ7 JTxx KQJ AQ9) = 16.30 K&R (AJ74 KJT3 AJ KJ3) = 17.45 2nd hand seems very borderline. the first one has defenatly not enoug playing strength to play game vs a random 6 or 7 count, it needs more, thats why would open it 1NT

in a recent played training match the aim was to look for the form of some pairs to help a NPC selecting his optimal team of a grup of some pairs. several sessions of 16 boards were played - so far so good. The NPC wanted to avoid boring deals so he did following: he duplicated two sets of boards for each segment. then looked at board board #1s and took the more interesting. then he looked for the more interesting #2 etc. so the more boringboards were dropped. Of course he is running the match, so he may use the boards he wants to use, but my question: will the results provide you a FAIR ranking between the pairs? and 2nd question, if not, how could pairs adjust their methods/style playing in such a contest to improve the results? I would think of two situations, where the fact the boards are selected could be important: A: xx - xx - xxx - AKQxxx, w/w, partner opens 1NT (15-17), they pass probably most will agree that this is a 3NT bid. Either the clubs are running or not. Even two small might be enough. you won't find out better - every bid you make gives them a chance to find a better defense. 5Clubs seems far away and a slam too now lets imagine partner has all suits stopped and 3 easy tricks and clubs are running for 6 tricks and are not blocking... don't you think the other board, the NPC has refused to play, was more intersting? isn't it far more likely that something is not breaking etc. than normal? say one pair bids only 3 clubs here and scores 110 for +5 imps against the field that was -2 in 3NT. Normally you expect such a pair to win those 5 imps maybe 3 times out of 10 and 7 times they lose 6. in this tourney they might be favorites to win imps on that board. and if you know in advance, shouldnt you adjust your bidding / play? B: you have a random 9 count, w/r 3rd seat... normaly there is some x% that the deal gets passed out, y% that they have some partscore and z% that 4th hand has a good+ hand and they might hae game/slam those percentage must change now, since the pass out would have been sorted out and the partscore maybe as well. if you think x=y=z = 33% on random hands then the pass-out percentage should change to 11%, that is the case both possible boards start with pass pass pass AND lead to a passout. to make it a partscore hand both boards must provide no game, that is 1-(2/3)^2... so game+ with opps will become 55%. players who like to psyche in 3rd seat, open very light etc. to make life difficult for opps will more often be rewarded now. any opinions on a competition like this?

there are two other things, that make such conventions difficult to play: a) you give up a lightner double, because the double by the non-leader can be assigned to x y or z tricks b) you can't always say, when its "cheap" to go one level higher. say your partner is passed and you decide to disturb opps strong club with 3dia on kqjxx 5th and a side queen, they double and partner raises this dias. they come to the point where they bid 6 clubs, that is finally making on guessing that queen for 1370 (or -100 if they misguess). due to your silly agreement you and your partner bid 6dia for 1400 :) on the other hand if you want to prevent it, you may count that queen as a trick, let them maybe even play 6clubs doubled and help them to make? had this convention on my card and it was one of the first i striked out