ritong

hi there:) farfie and i would be delighted to represent BBOF

hello yunling imo, showing two suits at once is better regarding competitive auctions- we all know that many expensive boards are generated by wrong décisions with undisclosed double fits- this rejoins your third point yes, more informations to opponents if hand belongs to them i m not sure this can be avoided. regarding 5/3 fits in other major, the responder can have a complete picture of the opener's hand via a 2NT relay, including 3514 shape. friendly henri

imho, answer is : we are 95% sure.. east might have concealed the spade 3 from the start, seeing the whole thing coming and simulating club 10xx- that would be a very deep play, for sure- now, it might be an answer to ben's question: rodwell finessed because it was possible that east was out of clubs.

hi guys are we 100% sure east has four spades and not five?

hello i would understand enough for slam, willing to discover a minor fit 4/4. it seems that sakurakan is so contemptuous about bots that he does not credit them for having heard about stayman.6 hearts is better than 6 NT here.

hi! i certainly agree with fred about the arithmetical side of his demonstration however, the fact that lho has got an early ruff basically means that he led to get one..do we all do that with a potential trump trick?

i think hamdi has a very identifiable style :) how so, "some other internationals"? :)

how come no one mentions the fact that, most of the time, the declarer has a two suiter on this auction? by two suiter i mean at least 5/4 , and the rest of the time he has 6+ spades therefore, i would not consider opening a blank ace as criminal in this particular situation, with two ideas in mind 1) avoid to lead his likely second suit, i.e. diamonds or 2) get super lucky and hit my partner s single or Kx if the suit i pick is declarer s side suit, or even grab our four possibles tricks when he had possible pitches. of course, all that is very speculative, but leading a trump or a diamond looks scary to me, anyway scarier than an ace. also, there is a miniclue in the fact that rho did not try to find a possible 4/4 fit in hearts, so my definitive choice would be club ace.

if i desperately need a good board, i would consider 3 NT on the second one, hoping to hit a case where the number of tricks is the same in both denominations, or opponents mislead, or are shocked enough with the dummy to misdefend.

was it? disparate quality and top suit longer?

hi guys! thanks ben for highlighting this hand, although it was some kind of a frustration to discover the dummy .. i even risked an " o_0? " which, for me, is a sign of intense stupefaction ;) keep in mind that i opened a real monster at the one level, and it turned out well since we established clearly the trump suit at a relatively low level, so i was happy with my initial decision (hence the frustration). what about blackwood? two things 1) it is not available if opener holds a void(not the case here, admittingly) 2)say you use it here, because you do not have a void. what if pard answers one key with 5♦? would you be sure that a 5♠ queen ask will be clearly perceived? what about 5 NT ? well...is there really a possibility that it means " pls pard pick a suit " ? i think no, frankly. is there a possibility that it means "hey pard, i hold ♠ AKxxxx ♥ Hxxxx ♦ - ♣ AK and i do not see an other way to check the top ♥s" ? i think yes, frankly. QED :P kudos for the nice lil convention, ben. very comfortable.

matchpoints scoring. for all the reasons i gave, with a slight decreasement to "b", i certainly would use the beast. reason e) comes into the picture if it turns out bad heh

hi there:-) my five cents for that one: 1m pass 1M pass 3NT represents a flat & fitted hand, with which opener intended to rebid 2NT, so 18/19 balanced. most probably a huge majority of pairs have a way to show flat fit, although i like this solution because it allows to stay in 3NT with two balanced hands, and it leaves room for responder to launch control checking at the four level if he wants to. it looks like space consuming proceed, but it establishes fit and defines openers structure & strength with maximum speed. bad side is it makes it more difficult to find a better lateral fit, and concerning the minor strong one suiter, frenchies play a constraining 2♣/2♦ strong opening arsenal which deals with this handtype. to answer initial post, i do not recommend to use that with a new partner:p