sfbp

uh, RHO made a negative double, (oops, edit) so he probably has four spades.

Well, the hand was worse than that [hv=d=e&v=n&n=sjhak832dakt3ckj3&s=st6543ht97d762cq4]133|200|Scoring: MP[/hv] My point is I felt "safe" as advancer making a courtesy raise over the Negdbl (which I certainly would not over a pass), knowing that overcaller should not have more than about 17 HCP, and nearly always less. My bid is known to be weak and I would not expect a raise. I still believe the "pard might raise to 4♠" argument to be a chimera. To us, 4♠ is not a strong bid, it is a preempt, and as noted by Al_U_Card, all strong responding hands can start with a cue-bid to give partner a chance to disavow his double somewhat. It actually took partner and me more than 10 minutes to see the double-dummy line too. I thought as I put the dummy down, he'd better appreciate my ♣Q ;)

That's just about exactly what happened. I was the partner of the overcaller, and after the inevitable negdbl raised him to 2H. He got excited and bid 4. Turns out the hand makes 4 double-dummy but he didn't. Sigh. Whether or not this is evidence for *not* doubling I'm not sure. His contention: I dont want to X because you might jump to 4 spades. My reply; if i bid 4S on Txxxxx xx Qxx Ax, you may even make it. Why worry about the sky falling?

This hand arose in a pairs game at the regional this week. [hv=d=w&v=n&s=sjhak832dakt3ckj3]133|100|Scoring: MP[/hv] I'd be curious to know your initial actions. I'll post a followup showing what happened next, later Thanks

(2D) X ?? [hv=d=n&v=e&w=saqt982hq6d42ckq6&e=s653ha52daqca7532]266|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] OK, so we have established that the panel agrees that DOUBLE is the best action over the opening 2D bid. Interestingly at the table, both East players bid 2NT. The opposing team went to RKC 1430 and had some sort of screwup after a 5♦ response (they were the highly qualified team). My partner's partner bid a pedestrian 4♠ and we pushed the board at +710. My partner was completely convinced that his 2NT was the right bid (partners always are), because he wanted to paint a picture of the ♦ situation. However I knew (which was in a way good) that he would take my bidding as natural, whereas I would normally expect transfers to be on, which doesn't particularly serve my purpose here (I want to protect the ♥Q). I suggested (and I admit this was completely after the fact, I can be annoying that way, but I like bidding to be based on structure, and I am still wrestling with the fact that in this case, the bid would have been to me the only real indicator for slamming) that 3♣ immediately gives the West hand a much better picture. Structurally it seems to me that 3♣ isn't such a bad bid. Sure, it is sticking your neck out - we needed to after the PRO's 1♠ bid previously described to have any chance in this Swiss. We were within one good board result's of coming an extremely honourable second to a much tuffer team yet. Over 2M we already play a convention that specifically prevents us from making bids like 3♣ on this sort of rubbish. I would like to hear from the experts a. How you think the auction might reasonably develop after a 2NT overcall, given transfers on? b. Whether you can see slam being bid after a X, and if so the sequence you would like? If I really got a 3♣ bid, I would have bid 6♠ right off the bat. (2♦) 3♣ 3♦ (P) 3NT (P) 6♠ Or something approximating (I'm not a great believer in blackwood).

[hv=d=e&v=b&s=s763ha62daqca7632]133|100|Scoring: IMP RHO deals and opens 2♦[/hv] RHO is a top pro, playing with a LOcLient. On a previous hand he held [hv=d=e&v=b&s=s763ha62daqca7632]133|100|Scoring: IMP RHO deals and opens 2♦[/hv] and responded 1♠ to opener's 1♥, so he is in full battle mode. This is to settle an argument with my partner, heheh. Stephen

That's YOUR agreement. We use K or A to show a different actual a priori holding and then the signal is as described.

I generally make the agreement with partner that if dummy has 3 or more and is not winning the trick then I will signal count. If dummy is winning the SECOND trick (not the first) I will signal suit preference. At suit contract this is most likely a singleton in dummy, although any time pard leads the A and the K is in dummy, suit preference is in order. This should be standard. Otherwise (2 in dummy anytime, or at NT contract when dummy has 0 or 1 cards) I signal attitude. As noted higher up, the important thing is to have AGREEMENT in principle what the signal means. This agreement improves your options by setting what is most frequently the correct (ie needed by the partnership) meaning. Here's the poster child for count at trick 1 in NT partner leads A promising AK Dummy has xxx You hold J842 If you signal COUNT, partner now knows that declarer has an even number also. Let's hope he could tell if declarer had 4 from the auction. He now continues with the K, dropping declarer's stiff Q remaining. OTOH, if there is only xx in dummy, now I play small (attitude) to show I do not have the Q. If dummy is winning the trick I tend to follow exactly the same rule, count underneath Axx but attitude underneath Ax

I assume by "but" you actually mean "by" Why is it an error for West to duck the first diamond? I agree that if he takes it, you can afford to lose one more trick and still keep all your options open in hearts (JT dub or K onside). But it seems to me that because you need to keep the small ♦ in hand that his first duck makes it more difficult for you. Probably I'm missing something, after all this is a beginner's hand ;)

West must have the diamond A for his opening bid, and the spades must be 5-5 - East has desperately few points and wouldnt bid 4♠ on only 4 of them. When the ♦A wins, we will assume that West returns a heart. So here's the plan. Lead one diamond towards hand right away. If W takes it, no problem. However he should duck. Now play three rounds of trumps ending in dummy and play another diamond towards the K. If W ducks, we have him. continuing diamonds guarantees the Q will be our third diamond trick. So he takes the A and leads a heart. We can afford a heart finesse at this point, assume it loses. East probably returns a spade at this point, which we ruff. If he returns a heart we are forced to play for 3-3 ♦, probably down, see below. After a spade return we can make the contract if diams were 3-3 or if diams were 4-2 and West had 4 of them including only the 10 or the 9 (ie East had 10x or 9x). We will have seen that 9 or 10 on the second diamond, obviously. If we didn't we have to play for the split. Stephen

Seems to me we are back to negative free bids. If you play a system where the double is made on any hand you don't want partner to pass the first time, you would like your next bid of a new suit to be about 80% forcing, roughly as forcing as a reverse but not as forcing as a jump shift. However here he bid the opps' suit, and he forced YOU to bid. Give the (undiscussed) normal situation of the double being a somewhat limited hand (WHY, btw? doubles ought to work the same in almost every situation, why do we confuse our learning players and then wonder why they cannot deal with high level auctions properly) then the 3D should be a weak bid since it is a. forced b. a new suit where 2♦ would have been at least a one round force in most people's argot (ie the positive FreeBidders). It gets a bit difficult finding a forcing bid opposite a forcing bid, unless the 1♠ was a psyche. Sounds like someone else here was at the table, and if so, they're not telling. In this case if you have a nice hand and want to make a forcing bid, cue bid again. The worst that can happen is pard raises you and he ain't going to do that on a 4 carder :( Stephen

I have no idea if your partner was right but I had a disaster with a Polish partner when HE opened 1 ♦ on this type of hand. My perspective that day was - why stretch to open wildly distributional hands with 1♦? (it's not the same with major suits, as the 4-level is more attainable, witness this hand). We got to slam down 1 because I thought he had an opening bid. He didn't. Perhaps this is what he was complaining about. In an indy this is a perfectly good bid of 2♦ or even 3♦. But what do I know? You could bid 4♥ and in an indy the defence may well not find their diamond ruff. I don't see anything wrong with anything else you did. And some days opening such hands works a treat. I don't care who it is, report to abuse. Stephen

I'm not adv+, so I'm gonna post as is.... Declarer has 3+ clubs for sure. And 4 spades. If you could be sure that partner holding the Q of spades would play it on the first round (which I would be because I led the K not the A) then it looks safe enough to attempt to promote pard's ♥J. ♠♠♠, then. He might not have the ♥J though. ;) However if pard has a minor suit ace it only matters if it is ♦A (pard will always get the ♣A). Even then it might get ruffed. So no rush to lead clubs if pard has ♣A. Assume for a moment the defence's only asset is the ♥K. Declarer having either void or A in ♦, pard is 2-2-7-2 (declarer is 4-6-0-3) and not even a Jack in his hand outside ♦. If you lead a ♣ now declarer can take it in dummy and finesse ♥. So, suppose I switch to a club at trick 2. Is declarer smart enough to play the ♥A at trick 3, because I switched to clubs? If declarer is 4-5-0-4 (with AQJ9x) then you gotta lead a club NOW. If partner has singleton ♣A, even better. But even a small singleton makes it difficult for declarer. If declarer is 4-5-1-3 then declarer has to play the A of hearts first to make his contract. If pard has as much as Jxx the J will make when you get in with the second spade as you can NOW go for the overruff. Declarer cannot drop Jxx so he has to get to dummy. Leading a club only loses when pard has exactly Jx in ♥, and declarer has a losing diamond. Now declarer lays down AQ of ♥ and runs the clubs. Game over. But PARTNER doubled 5♥. Why? Because he needs a club lead. Duh where was I wasting time the last 5 minutes breathing heavily......? I lead a ♣ immediately. Down 2.

By 'You' I didnt specifically mean "You, Frances". I'm sure that whatever methods you use, they are well-honed :) Sorry for the unintended slight to you (and your partner's) competence. Stephen

There is another way, Frances. Mikeh seems to allude to it indirectly. The opening lead is special (because Dummy is not revealed) and your post appears to acknowledge that. However many years ago, Vinje (I think) came up with the concept that Dummy's holding can be used to determine the a priori flavour of partner's signal. Now the use of A and K by the leader is to show specific honour combinations, which is what mikeh alludes to. After all, how often is it when we are sure what information we want? It's like the difference between blackwood and cue bids - telling partner our hand is more efficient most of the time, because he has choices and is not robotically answering. The discussion about the VERY SLOW play of a card highlights this. There will be cases (in this scheme I describe) where leader's partner has to think, but these will be legitimate and the leader is unlikely to get any unfair information, in my experience. Here's the idea: we make a lead that this quite specific to our holding. Indeed with dummy exposed and his own hand the signaller can usually tell what our holding is. Partner decides how to signal based on dummy's holding in the led suit, roughly as follows (assuming that at the moment he signals, leader is winning the trick - partnerships can still have a different rule about whether they signal attitude or count when dummy wins the first trick): 1. If dummy has 0,1 or 2 cards, he signals attitude 2. If dummy has 3 or more cards, he signals count. 3. If dummy is clearly winning the second trick, or declarer can from the auction have no more than a singleton (at suit contract), he signals suit preference (this is basically standard). This seems to work quite well. There's more, to do with the lead of the King which shows a specific holding, and requests unblock in certain situations, but that's a topic for another day. I actually use this (as hinted above) against both suit and NT contracts, though the meaning of attitude will of course be quite different! The poster child for using count signals against NT is as follows: You lead A from AKxx, dummy holds xxx. Partner shows even count if he has 2 or 4. As long as you know declarer cannot have 4 then you know to play the K next. This wins because if partner has Jxxx then declarer had Qx. Of course if he shows odd count, then declarer has 1 or 3, and you play a small one next. Under standard signalling partner is unclear whether to signal when he holds the J. On the other hand if dummy has xx, partner now signals attitude, and "normal" signalling is used. There will be cases where both partners needs to think about the meaning, but having the agreement that in principle we know what we are signalling for seemes to work pretty well. Try it with your favourite partner for 2 weeks and keep track of how often the a priori meaning assigned by this rule is actually wrong. Failing that, do it anyway and see how many times in the next 2 weeks partner yells at you - my guess is it will not be often. The boot is on the other foot usually, partner will say to himself "I wish I could be sure that partner is signalling <whatever>". To recap what I am saying is, the default meaning under this rule turns out to be the one you want most of the time.

Yup I had roughly the same problem I told GIB I wanted to play some contract by bidding it. GIB with 2 points and 6 of his suit to the Q corrected to 4 of it... and 5 of it..... and 6 of it.... and 7 of it..... This has to be the closest I have seen to a genuine and consistent BUG in the GIB bidding structure. Stephen

well i didn't catch that on the first time, that was offline bridge but I stand by my comment, South is not relieved of an obligation to play bridge If precision opener and positive response then he cannot possibly have the hand he is holding.

I'm gonna buck the trend and bid 2♠ Why? Because it least it tells pard some of my cards (I can always amaze everyone and bid again) but I have soooo few points and/or cards in the other suits, that the bidding is going to tell me more than I tell them. For sure an opponent with 3 spades is going to place partner with about the same number. Mind you, the spades are AKQ8 so it depends which one is singleton :D Who knows, maybe I will even buy it in 3!S doubled when someone has a spade stack? Too bad the solution was already posted. This hand reminds me of the player who passed a 10-card spade suit. His logic, which was impeccable, was that someone was bound to bid again (i know, you can label me with the dunce hat because in that case it went All Pass) but here it seems rather unlikely that with around 25 HCP unaccounted for, that noone will bid. And this is the boss suit. Stephen

1. 2♦ Anything else misstates the hand, and doubling and bidding is too hard when pard has a decent hand and hearts. 2. X Because I want to see what happens, lol. You can't be fixed until you're fixed, so there's no point in bidding (or passing) out of fear. I hope pard would convert my subsequent 4H bid to 4NT with half a stopper, but I admit, it's a pious hope. 3. 2♥ I don't care how bad the suit is, put the card on the table so pard can begin to get a picture of the hand. Fourth seat never has much anyway... what does he expect??? I'm never doubling with this lot- I have some tolerance for pard and give him only a couple of hearts and we are away to the proverbial races. 4. P Clearcut, as it's not good enough for the "ignore-RHO-and-bid-2S" move. 5. 6♠ Who knows whether I am sacrificing or whether they are? I'm reasonably happy doubling them if they go higher, but 6S has to have something going for it.

This is exactly why telling opps the NAME of a convention is useless. South should know better than to ask the name of the system they are playing. Also if South has any brains at all he will realise that the auction stinks to high heaven of Polish Club, where 1C is either strong, clubs, or balanced Weak NT. No other possible auction makes sense unless the 1H bidder explains his bid as "GF 5+hearts" or something similar. The fact that South doesnt have to put up with this in the ACBL is no excuse. That's there, and here's here. There is an obligation to use one's brain when playing bridge, In that case South *knows* that the points don't add up, and should ask West the meaning of 1NT. BEFORE the auction ended. Of course, it's always possible that West psyched, but the failure to ask EAST or receive a self-alert from EAST about the 1H bid (not to mention the fact that EAST now passed 1NT after making a game forcing bid in precision, which according to OP "everyone knows") is South's own fault. The explanation of 11-14 points was correct. Were the players by any chance showing Polish Flag, with Polish names, and perhaps some std Polish conventions? No adjustment.

I have been thinking all day about a strange line of play that may work, that happens to work on the existing layout but also probably is ok on several others. Take the first trick with the Q♥, and immediately run the 10 of clubs. a. If it wins you are home as you can cross to hand with the KS to cash the rest of your club tricks, 5C+3S + QH + AD b. If it loses to JC on your right, righty's best return is a small diamond. J, K, A, and run off spade and club winners. The fun part is righty has to come down to three cards, presumably the Q9X of diamonds. If he keeps a spade, he can escape the endplay. Similarly lefty has to come down to AJ H and a diamond, or you can throw him in to make your 9H at trick 13. So they both have to defend perfectly to survive. Quite similar to the play you describe at the other table, but opps have two chances to go wrong, IF the JC is on the right. As the cards lie, the 10 wins and you are laughing all the way to the bank.

Wow: browser type = A fixes the crash from popping up IE on my Win98 machine when BBO client shuts down. Thanks Fred Stephen

You appear (with your unproven and anecdotal data) to be agreeing with me - that in an environment unperturbed by the effect you stated, that in fact the trend I noted for the okb data is real, then. It's a lot more real with the BBO data. More anon..... sfbp

BTW i don't know what it means, but the weak jump shifts to 2M are WAY more successful on BBO. Over 1.25 imp with an SEM of only 0.11 Of course there are negligible matchpoint results, and I havent looked at tourneys... yet. I would guess WJS is more common percentage wise than on okb, but I invite you to check. Why should I do all the work? Stephen

I sincerely hope he has (but I don't know your partnership style of course) ♠Qx ♥KJxx ♦AKxxxx ♣A I bid 3NT Stephen