brianshark

To be honest, I don't think my hand is offensively good enough to bid 3♦. I'll pass fairly easily here. I might make a noise if opps bid too high. But other than that, I'm happy defending unless p has something else to say.

I think I would punt 6♦ right away. *shrugs* I might miss 7 but I won't worry too much about it.

Nobody said your not allowed to double without 4♥s. But what we are saying is that it's a factor that discourages a double, and has to be weighed in with all the other factors.

The problem with "low to show count, high to discourage in the suit" is how is partner to tell that you have led count instead of small from an honour? And if you lead high, how is partner to tell that you don't have a doubleton? There's nothing wrong with leading MUD if that's what you have agreed and it's often obvious by the second trick that your partner has neither doubleton nor honour. But any agreement works in it's situation if there is agreement about it. There's plenty of sources for inferences. Far more than most non-experts can process anyway.

I might bid 3♦, though I'm leaning towards 4NT as well. Don't get me wrong, I've made t/o doubles holding a void before but I do it with great discomfort as a calculated risk and pray that partner will pull it. I don't think this is the hand to lie about your holding. When we have one trump less than partner expects, when we can't lead ♠s right away like partner expects, I'd say that on hands that we knock 2♠ a decent amount, we may have missed a minor suit slam. Or we may end up in game in a 4-3 heart fit going off because of a nasty break. Having said that, I'm no "expert" either. Obviously my opinions are inferior because they don't agree with the 'one true choice' that is double.

I don't think South leapt to 6♥. I think djehuti just intended to say that after 4♦, North used Keycard and they ended up in 6♥.

Well yes but that's a horribly innefficient way of doing it. Unless your playing for 5 tricks, I think you should cash the Ace first. It will also give you 3 tricks from every possible combination, but also let you make 4 on all layouts except QT8x(x) with LHO or QT8xx with RHO. The correct play for 5 tricks is cashing the K and hooking the J.

Woohoo! 19-9! Nice win for Ireland. Though Wales faught hard and made it a tough match. In much the same way that Scotland, Italy and the Bears didn't. I don't mind the odd game of gridiron, but the stop-start nature of it really annoys me. And damn I hate the commercial breaks. It was funny becauese after 0100 or so, the ITV lads didn't have commercial breaks, so every time the game stopped for an American one, it had to go back to the studio with the pundits chatting about the game. And it went back to them so often they started running out of things to say. Or so it seemed. My faourite part of the match was the 5 minutes period half way through the 4th where the Bears on offense had to keep up the pace lest the clock run out on them. At least there was a little flow to the game then. But Grossman wasn't really up to par, and Bears were disappointing on offense so Colts won fairly comfortably really.

You have to be very intelligent to become president. Unfortunately, it requires a certain kind of intelligence, and it's not the one that makes you a good president.

I will admit I have very little knowledge about the merits of various 4th seat jump openings. I've never read much material on them. (So these discussions on them are interesting and helpful.) But I do play that the jump shows a decent 6 card suit, and 11-14 points or so. Basically, I wan't to buy the auction, expecting to make, but defining my hand closely enough so that partner can act intelligently to investigate game, or compete over interference. And I admit that I chose 2♥ as my bid in the other thread, but some of the arguments against it have been persuasive. Particularly that because of my wild shape, my hand isn't being defined sufficiently well for my partner to make informed calls.

I don't see why an unlimited hand in an auction that lacks space should be making a 'mild slam try' opposite a limited partner. The negative doubler needs plenty of extra values to make slam a possibility, and the limited hand has a narrow range of possible values so can really only answer yes or no. It's hard to put into words... but it seems awfully inefficient. Put another way, to quote the principle of captaincy, the limit hand makes his partner the captain. The captain asks the questions, and the limited hand answers. If the captain of this auction really wants to know if his partner is min or max for his limited bid, he can bid 4♠. Now that all the controls are known to be present, this can only ask for extra strength (as with sufficient strength and knowledge of all controls, he should just bid 4NT right away). So a return to 5♥ shows min and sign's off, else keycard. And as I said, I wouldn't blame a partner for being optimistic and a little pushy if he did that and would consider ourselves fairly unlucky the hands shapes matched so closely meaning 5 goes off.

In my regular 2/1 partnership, I play concealed splinters (which double as showing singletons/voids if asked). The method is similar to those posted earlier in he thread. I find that by far the biggest benefit comes from the concealement of the shortness for non-slam hands rather than differentiating between sing/voids when slamming. Since the shortness is a known control, and the hand strength is adjusted based on which it is (ie. if it's only a singleton, you'll have an ace elsewhere to compensate) it makes little difference for small slams. Maybe it does for grand slams but you can always ask by bidding the splinter suit (or show by rebidding the splinter suit) in that case anyway.

I would automatically cue the ♦A as North made a slam try with an unlimited hand and he may only need controls rather than strength to find a slam. You have to show it. If your methods say that the 4♦ cue here is a slam try itself, then change your methods. The blame lies exclusively with North as he made two slam tries on a hand that is worth only 1. After 4♦, he should sign-off having showed his extra strength and let his partner have a say in proceedings. Edit: Just read jvage's post and I'm in total agreement, including the bit about cueing ♠s.

I saw a statistic once, it's in my MP defense book (by Jim Priebe I think). It basically gives you a run-down of where your MPs are expected to come from in a typical session. To get right to the point, he said that, on average, in a typical MP session (~24 bds => ~4% of the session's MPs per board): - Each overtrick is worth 1% of the MPs for the session - Each set is worth 2% That would suggest that the setting trick is worth twice as the trick that prevents an overtrick. So if you can safety play for = but try for -1 risking +1 with odds of 50-50, then you should try set the contract. In fact, you should try if the odds are as low as 33% but any lower, just cash out and play for the =. Having said that, this only applies to fairly 'normal' contracts. The analysis above (which is also mentioned in the book) about the 'normality' of a contract supercedes it I think. So if opps bid a pushy 3NT where 3/4 of the field will only be in 1NT/2NT, a set should be 3% and an overtrick only half a percent now or something like that.

I'll pass. Good intermediates in the short suits suggests defending.

I think I'll bid 2♣.

Double and take my plus.

♣J

I think I'll bid 1♥ as my ♠Ace is worth a trick whether it's the trump suit or not, but J9 of ♥s may be valuable texture. I don't like 1♦. Just cos.

I just checked, assuming a 6-1 break, the finesse works on 72.188% of the layouts, and the safety play works on 57.43% of the layouts. But those odds take no account of points for the overcall.

Edited... right you are gwnn!

Oops, I thought it was 6-3...

With a long ♠ suit that could be run, I think I prefer the more aggresive ♥ lead.

I'm a 1♠ opener. But that's because it's what I had originally learned when starting to play bridge and have learned nothing since to convince me otherwise.

No / Yes I'll expect partner to protect me in the first, and I'll protect partner in the second.