PhantomSac

Surely north can just keycard and ask for the queen if his partner shows six spades. You have 12 tricks if you have 6 spade tricks, and 11 tricks if you have 5. I would assume when my partner pulls 3N to 4S they have 6, they would just pass with 5 (unless they are going to bid or try for slam in which case we are gonna make 7N). I also think you should not jump to 3N after kokish to show a different range, it is more important to be at 2n and let partner stayman or transfer especially when your hand is that strong rather than try to show 27-28 or whatever. In this case partner will texas or bid 3H planning to slam try, in either case you can get to slam (even over texas, since as described earlier it is safe to keycard and ask for the queen if partner has shown 6 spades).

They are robots. That is in the OP, as well as how the defense went.

Given that I have 4 spades I would just bid 3H

Generally attitude but obviously depends on the situation.

So a bunch of people are opting to overcall 1S with an 18 count that includes 5 solid and 5-5 and prime values as opposed to bidding 2H which shows 5-5? Consider my mind blown.

The whole day has been incredible. Lol.

Thanks Helene. Cross imps is a lot better than total points, especially because it feels like I did better in that format :P

If people would like imp averages, then put in the work and do it! I don't think simming these things is a great idea. It depends on what people bid 4M with (I bid a lot, and that is better against opps who are more likely to have 5 trumps and weaker hands for 4M...). Even if you sim it there is a lot of judgement in what happens after that. The tighter they bid 4M, the more they can bid, the more accurately LHO can bid over that, and then a lot of it is what partner does, which depends on what you do, etc. Sometimes there is just a fun excersize. Trying to simulate this stuff is still worse than experience right now imo. And partnership and understanding the opps range (the more they bid 4M the less you should bid, etc) is very important. Of course its a small sample size but it's a fun excersize. FWIW I am guessing I was one of the worst in this (-4kish), that doesn't make me think that I am really bad at competitive bidding, this was a fun excersize, and it was also instructive (Some of the close decisons I was "out there" relative to the field, so I should rethink what I did there, etc).

I wouldn't lose sleep over this one... Tough luck man sorry

Thanks for all the work Phil, that was fun.

Depends on the level of the opps of course, but even if they don't ruff you might gain something based on how long they think about ruffing (I suspect it would take an average defender a lot longer to pitch with a stiff trump than with Kx of trumps). Also obviously agree with trinidad, pitching the ace of diamonds was not good... pitching a spade is best imo (like we are going to pitch 2 spades, of course this is not possible since we woulda pulled trumps first, but the defender would have to figure it out which might take them a little bit, again depending on their level). Anyways if nothing interesting happens we can just revert to the finesse but seems like a cost free way to maybe gain something as you say.

Definitely X

Yeah opening 3rd r/w with this hand just sucks.

Declarer should at least try the HK at trick 2. Sometimes people cannot avoid the temptation to ruff a winner with their stiff trump.

Well, we would definitely be compatible partners lol.

Your hand is massive on hand 3. LOL at passing or bidding 3D. I would bid 3H, I have a monster (SJ, DQ, HA, and a double fit). If I could not do that I would bid 4S ahead of passing for sure.

Yes it is too big

IMO the clearly best defense is to play the ace of clubs and the 5 of hearts. Partner (who has AJ87 or AJ7 of hearts based on trick 1), will know the count and about the CA. We risk nothing, the diamonds in dummy are not going away on the clubs because we played the CA. The risk is if declarer has 6 spades and 4 diamonds and the clubs go away if partner does not play a club. This is the clearest and most risk free way to enable yourself to cash out. At the table I did not see the danger of the clubs going away (requires declarer to have 6 spades and 4 diamond tricks...) so I lazily continued hearts and my partner did not know to play a club.

1) 4S 2) 4S 3) P 4) X 5) P 6) X 7) 5D 8) X 9) 4S 10) 4S 11) X 12) 4S 13) P 14) P 15) 4S 16) X 17) 4S 18) P 19) P 20) 4S 21) 4S 22) 4S 23) X Edited answer 14 I thought white was w/r :( lol.

Can someone remind me what the british way of saying the vuls means (white, red, amber, and green)? Also Phil I assume we are meant to assume that the opps are not playing a limited opening bid system in all of these hands right?

Playing with a world class partner against inexperienced opps, I held the following defensive problem today: [hv=pc=n&w=s82hqt95d9864ca73&n=sk753hk32dajt2cq8]266|200[/hv] The bidding was 1D by north, 1S by south, 2S by north, 3S by south, 4S by north. I led the ten of hearts and it went low 7 low (UDCA). Your play!

Yep

Shouldn't be too hard at all, if you actually have that auction they should double with the king of hearts on your right 100 % of the time.

I addressed the vul with my post above, but to address form of scoring.... At imps I am mainly concerned about missing a vul game. I hate passing with the best hand at the table. So at imps I would think red/white is the best vul to bid (missing game is the worst and we collect 50's)... and passing at w/r is the best (even if we make game, we are collecting hundreds and white). red/red, I dunno, I would probably double, getting 300 into our 620 or 600 is pretty costly. But you also have to be concerned you go for a number if you double... I dunno but if they don't redouble it's 180 (hopefully!) and I tend to worry more about missing vul games than going for a number. So I would def pass w/r at imps, def X r/w, and probably X r/r. The considerations are totally different at imps than MP so yeah I guess form of scoring matters.

Well, let's go individually. When we are vul, doubling is less attractive at MP because if it is not our hand we might go for 200 (and no generally I'm not concerned about getting doubled, but going down 2 at the 2 level or partner overcompeting is a real possibility. And against good opps they are more likely to double us when we are vul on a partscore hand since the upside is so high.) I think it's pretty obv that doubling or competing vul at MP when it's dangerous in general is more appealing when we are white, going for 50 or 100 is not as scary. Also there is the slight chance that we go for 100 on their 90 hand, not that likely but it is another downside of competing in general vul when they don't (yet) have a major suit fit and we are vul. So I think us being vul is obviously bad. What about them being vul? Well, if we manage to double them for down 1 on our partscore that is pretty elite (+200 instead of +100). But what are we going to be able to double them in? Clubs or 1N, everything else is 3-3 so undoublable most likely. If they stay in 1N X I would guess they are 50-50 to make so I'm not thrilled about it anyways. On the other hand if 1N is down 2, they have an easy out to run (esp to 2m which they wouldn't have otherwise). Doubling hurts us. Yeah we wanna double if it's our hand in general, but we need to be beating them exactly 1. If we are beating them 2 I am ok with passing. Down 2 is not that unlikely if partner has the HK where they do better in a minor or we compete to 2x making 110 or 140. Ofc we might have a game and pass out 1N which is a good time for doubling, but that's true whether they are vul or not. I think I'd rather double/compete when they are white than when they are red, though I guess that's more debatable. So overall I think us being red is worse for competing (undebatable), and I think them being red is us worse for competing (debatable but maybe you'll think like I do after this post!). That makes this the worst vul to compete. Given what I think is a borderline hand (double and pass both certainly reasonable), I would go with the vul and form of scoring as my deciding factor.