Tomi2

you can try to eleminate side suits and hope for a defensive error, say ducking first club, takin 2nd one, playing spade, when they are 2-2 your plan is safe since you will leave a high spade in dummy as entry for a finesse later. exit with a club and hope for dia return, take the ace and escape, then you win for examle if your LHO has: xx Kxx KQxx KQJT on any other distribition of the minor honors you must hope, the opponents fail to unblock / lead a heart from the right side. after club ducked and club return you are safe every time lho has to win that club and has KQ in dias - this slightly improves your odds only risking an direct club ruff

if partner redoubled this i'd lead the 2 of dias and say "one down is good bridge"

last time this came up in a similar case (1♦-p-p-1♠-2♦-p-) i was happy to have agreed to play no penalties on low-level contracts. that time i had some 13 hcp with 4 hearts 4 clubs 3 dias and 2 spades, in the original post everything else then PEN is ok to me, some decent points with good majors or real points with no bid, say 3-4-2-4 with 12 or so. still expect my partner to run... with AQT87 in clubs i still wait for partners T/O in the reopening seat, since he will have club shortnes and probably one major to bid a double with his hand

they you should watch this more carefully. partner returned ♠3 and not ♠2, so he is not interested in clubs IMO, but he sees the chance of the ♦ruff, I play him for the 4333 distr. "I have fit in all suits" and ace of hearts

in hand 2 I underlead ♦a and write down -1

doesn't this prove, that these systems suck in the actual game of Bridge?

i expect decl to have a side suit but no hearts since he would bid them maybe in mp, so i think its clubs. I lead a heart to partners queen and decl. ace and later I wait for my club and heart tricks on a good day I lead king of hearts to avoid some squeeze against me later, but its too early to think about this now

thx for all replies partner had something like Jxxxxx x Kxx xxx but since dias were 1-3 6!D fails while you win 7 spades seems my idea to bid a forcing pass here was not the best one :P

couldnt we bid 6♥ as grandslam try now?

bidding goes: (4♥) - p - (p) - X (p) - 4♠ - (5♥) - ?? is pass here forcing? does vuln. change this? actual we were red/red what is your bid with: AKQ A AKJxxx Axx

win the ace, play ♥ to the ace, ♣to the king, simulating you made a finesse with Kx in clubs, then cash ♥Q, go to dummy with ♥, hope they split 3-3, discard you ♦loser on the good heart and hope RHO ruffs with a small card from Ax (case one) or forgets to ruff with a small card from Hxx (likely Kxx) (case 2) in case one you win the !D return und play ♠Q simulating that you used your only entry for not taking the trump finesse but the club finesse sonds strange but maybe works on a good day. on a bad day some of these cards gets ruffed and you lose that game

if you bid 3♠ on nothing and get doubled and fly for millions, some pointed out, that we dont geht the bad score so its not that dangerous - thats right others pointed out, that you will give your opponents good scores - thats not 100% right... on every board on every table that has a counted scroe 2 MP are given away to opponents who sit on the other direction. so if you go for top zero on every hand you give your actual opponents lots of MPs but steal them from other pairs sitting in the same direction as your opps this event sounds funny - maybe fred should add this to BBO, would be nice to try out such :)

this sould be nonforcing because both could not force (1NT and 2♥) but since both show a hand that sees chances for game (2NT and 3♠ instead of 2♠on the previous round) it should not be passed

what aout this: say 4NT is RKC for spades then: 1st step (5♣) = 2 Keycards or 0 Keycards w/o ♠Q or 4KC with ♠Q next step then asks for ♠Q if you assume 2, else for kings 2nd step asks for kings if you assume 2KC in partners hand but dont need to know ♠Q 2nd step (5♦) = 1KC with ♠Q or 3w/o♠Q or 5 with ♠Q next step asks for kings 3rd step (5♥) = 1KC w/o ♠Q or 3with ♠Q or 5 w/o ♠Q nest step (5NT) asks for kings 4th step (5♠) = 0KC with♠Q or 4 w/o ♠Q nest step (5NT) asks for kings if you had a precise bidding before asking you will be able to read partners answer, else you count your own KCs like in normal 14-30 and try to figure it out, and if this doesnt help (then btw you wouldnt be able to reat answers like 1 or 4 as well) you have a 50% chance to have the ♠Q in your hand and will be surre what partner has. So you will get Keycards AND ♠Q on a low level and can start to ask for kings maybe before 5 of your suit of course you can (must) combine this sheme with kickback or something similar to avoid getting overboard

you must use every hint Gerben gives you... its late and you play in a German club... so lots of tired ladies around you. Now while you think about your squeeze your opps fall asleep and you simply put ♥J into the ♦suit and a small d♦ to the ♥'s you have both 8 and 7 in both suits but there is still a chance that opps dont see it. so when they wake up again you caim the top tricks :rolleyes:

[/b]This overrating starts with star players in BBO. Somehow players from my country Germany recieved a star for winning one major national championship but this only qualifies them as "Expert" if you take this 100 000 000 and try fo find a fair method to split them into 5 groups, then 2 ideas come into my mind at once: every group is as bis as the other: that means there should be 20 000 000 WC, 20 000 000 Exp etc. this seems not logical but 1/5 of the players beeing expert is close to BBO standard. (now 8000 are online and 1600 are expert!) the other way is to take 100 000 000 ^( 1/5) (thats nearly 40) and say: There should be 40 players all over the world who should call themselves "worldclass" There should be 40*40=1600 Players worldwide who should call themselves as "Expert" 64000 advanced ~2 500 000 intermediate rest something like beginner this would mean, that ALL WC and Expertplayers in the world are currently online even a rating between "wolrdclass" players woulbe usefull: There are 65 World Grand Masters alive (according the www.wbfmasterpinots.org), about 50 of them seem to be still active players, 15 did not imporve their rating in major international championchips in the past 10 yeras some examples of this first group in BBO are alle the well known Italians, Americans etc. you see in the top list. One of the 15 players who does not score that much anymore ist B.Garozzo then there is a group of players, who often have good results in international competitions but do not qualify as WGM, they are called "Life Master" or "International Master", some BBO users as example: Fred Gitelman :huh: or Larry Cohen (both WGM) or his partner Bred Moss (WIM), T.Sadek- W- El-Ahmady (both WIM) a 3rd group of BBO stars are players who once had inernational success or, as the definition says, have represented their country in a world championship. That fits to many "junior" stars, every year there is a World Championship for juniors/schools, I participated in two of them already (so even I should have a BBO Star), next year will be my third, then there are events for women and seniors - same here- and there are many players who represented their country (say Australia or any other country where its not as difficult to qualify for the team as in USA, Italy etc.) in 1982. so my idea for the ratingsystem would be to give 2 additional stars to players from the first group and one for group 2 members (Fulvio2002 would have *** rating then) and for all others: maybe the BBO software could make it possible to rate your partner and oponents after each match / tournament. So everybody who would be interested in a reting system could first "selfrate" him self and all his partners and oponents could chose 3 options: "I think his rating is too low - he seens better than he rates him self" "I think his rating is ok" "I think he is overrated" or somehing like "score this player on a scale between 0 and 10" and then the scores are multiplicated with the #of boards you played against/with him and an average score is taken. in your porifle you would see your rating and what others think about this

I think there wille be no Junior Pairs in Frankfurt this year the WBF page says, that thee will be a junior event in Beijing and that the next regular junior-pairs event will be in 2009 and every odd year

i think lho has 0-7-6-0, rho 0-2-3-8, partner 9-0-2-2 i see 7 spades going for -4 thats -1100 if they realy have their grand, than this is cheap, else not i double and hope for that ♦Q in partners hand or maybe one of them will pull to 7♥ - nobody knows. Maybe I am wrong, but: The only thing I am sure about, is that my spade holding makes NOT an autmatic 7♠ bd when will we get the solution of this hand?

I think I'd have played ♦Q in the first trick to see what decl makes next. he will need the !d trick, so I hope think I wont lose tempo but I will gain inromation from his play and my parters signals. One error I will not make, is to play him for 4333 and forget about all other possibilities. That would be careless even if I had been misinformed, but it would be a big mistake, if decl had a non 4333 hand and decided to sell it as 4333

There are many problems in many responses: some say "accept 4♥ and double is for penalty" - this can not be logical since you have the chance to let them bid 5♥ and double for 300 points more, so if I would be you partner, I would never believe 4HX should be to play some say "just bid 5♣ or 5♦, whatever your normal answer to 4NT had been" they forget, that partner may take this NOT for the normal answer, they add two steps for pass and double and to for 4♠ and 4NT. So if you have special agreement, what your 5th and 6th step after 4NT would mean, and it is still possible you hold a hand like this in the given context, partner maybe will understand your answer like the 5/6th step and not like the 1st or 2nd like intented. so I would understand my partners bids, given the agreements, like this: accept 4♥ and double = 0 or 3 Keycards (for me the word dopi means double = 0) accept 4♥ and pass = 1 / 4 Keycards accept and bid 4♠ = 2KC (or 5) without ♠Q accept and bid 4NT = 2 with ♠q accept and bid 5m or 5♥ = the number oe keycards agreed and void in this suit let them correct to 5♥ and double = my hand does not look like we have a slam on but I can defend 5♥ very well (some boring 4333 with few controls) correct to 5♥ and pass = my hand is good for defending and playing a slam aswell, maybe good troumps, outside shortage but QJTx in ♥ or something like this

this is a normal hand for a convention "developed" by a german open player (a doctor, for insiders) - easy 4♦ opener, long ♦ with 5 card major side suit, sometimes for tactical reasons (or if you forget the convention) its only long dias... 4♣ is ♣+major, same thing with only clubs but for tactical reasons your major may be ♦ - but this is very rare (with 4nt beeing both minors) my junior partner and me adopted this convention, after we saw it beeing used by him in the last Cavendish and we had 3 or 4 hands, we could open 4m we never argued further bidding exept of penalty doubles, 1400 and 1100 were the only scores we had after these openings

this was an interesting posting, but I have to disagree in the fact, that the Girl's event in Youth Bridge is bad. Girls under 20 years can play both, "Girls" and "Schools", they are not at the same time. In our German team two girls joined the schools team after their own event. Joanna Krawczyk from Poland even managed to win both events! (after winning gold 2005 with the scools team - its her 3rd European Youth title - wow!) In the Junior series (under 25) we had a lot of female players (who then could not participate in the girls event). In Our Team Maria Wuermseer played very well, we finished fifth, the goldmedal went to the Netherlands with Marion Michielsen and Meike Wortel, silver to Italy with Irene Baroni (oh dear, I played against her and then she had 25VP more) . Many other Teams also had girls in their squad, and most of them played their first international events 2004 or 2005 in the Girls - competition and later joined their junior teams. I bet Joanna and many others will do so too! To the starting topic: I also think that a small group of female elite-players could play in an event like the BB but they would end somewhere at place 15 or so maybe 10. So those players have to chose "should I fight for becoming an open player and win few medals or should I try to win as much women tourneys as possible and find sponsors for such tournament.

dont the percentages change, if your partner looks at his hand and has a 5 card ♦ suit? I bet this reduces the chances to find a 5 card fit in partners hand

one argument for "up the line" would be, if you had a sequence like: 1NT - 2♦ - 2♠ - ? (2♠ is agreed as aking for exact shape) 2NT = 5 clubs, next step asking for exact shape 3♣ = 5 dias, next step.. gives you equal place to discover - what ever you agreed after the relays - keycards, controls etc. before you reach the slam in this suit, while 2nt = dias 3♣ = clubs gives you more spade for bidding with dias and less with clubs, i think the first way is better. but the negative is, that you very often will forget that a bid in a suit shows another in situations that you did not discuss, so you need to be concentrated on every non natural sequence. this one you gave is one, my example is one, ask for specifig kings is one, ask for shortnes if you play this is one, ok thats clear, but what about a sequence, where you found a heart fit and bid 3♥ that is agreed as "slaminterest, asking for cuebids", would 3♠ then be a ♣cuebid? i can imagine, there are lots of sequences, that do not appear that often, where one player will think "this is natural, it cant be one of the up-the-line ones" and the other will think "its not natural..." or one will forget about playing up-the-line on other aspect for me, and that was always most important for me, is that I have huge problems to count the steps and make no mistakes. I do not know why, but it takes me a lot of time, to think about what bid means what and what possible bids were not bid, so what does partner have and what does he not have. for example: after 4NT blackwood I somehow learned fast, that 5♣ is 0/3 keycards and so on, but then I started playing kickback and I mus say, I really hate it, because I find it very hard to give the correct answer or to read partners answer while seeing a bid in a suit that means "i have that shortnes, I have that King etc." is no problem for me. Is there anybody out there, who has a similar problem? One thing, that I think both types of pdships must agree: if a answer "none" is possible, what step does it get: 2♥ = weak two - 2♠ ask for single, if you respond "natural", is 2nt = no single 3♥ = spade single or the other way round for "up-the-line" players the question isis "no" the first or the last step

sure, Gerben? wouldn't it be great, to be able to play bridge on BBO while you are dummy in a f2f match? :)