brianshark

Looking at this hand, my first impression was that it was a rubbish 9-loser hand with little support and pass was clear. But the more I look at it and the more I draw up typical hands for partner to hold, the more I'm realising that game could well be on. You're holding of ♠T9xx on this auction is golden because it means that you and pard have very little wasted strength in ♠s and all your HCP are working. Plus, pard is never going to bid 4 unilaterally on an awful lot of decent to very good hands that make game pretty good. So put me down for 4♥.

I think I would pass and take our plus, even though it may only be 100 or 300. We might not have the values for 3N, especially as you probably have a single ♥ stopper.

Once we've found our fit, double tends to be penalty-oriented. Should have 4 decent cards in their Major, suggests pard pass unless very shapely.

I thought it was quite succinct and got the point across pretty well, myself.

After 1♦-2♣(GF), I like to play: 2♦ = any hand with 5+ ♦s 2♥ = 44, usually a balanced hand, and therefore in the 12-14 or 18+ range 2♠ = same 2NT = 12-14 or 18+ without a 4 card Major or 5 card minor

Prefer random hands. I will play if I am free, though I am not often free. Tuesday evenings usually work for me.

My regular partner and I play slow shows a 4-card Major.

Oh, I assumed we were talking about if he jumped to 4♠ directly over the double.

The methods are fine. I've seen worse. This is a textbook pre-emptive raise.

Playing a "standard" system with "standard" opening requirements, I would not open this. While the raw point count and shape suggest it is close to an opening bid, the main demerits are the singleton ace which isn't as useful as if it were in your long suit, and the lack of a second quick trick, important especially if partner doubles them and expects an opening hand to have a bit of defense.

Will the broadcasts be exclusively from the open? Will there be any broadcasts from any other categories, ie. Women, Seniors, Mixed, U28, U26, U21?

Agree with Dbl, 4♣ over 3♠ and 4♣ over 3NT. I'm definitely going to bid 5♣ over 4♠. There's no way I'm making partner play on a potential 4-2 fit.

Imagine you are playing carrot club or polish club or something, and you open 1C with the weak balanced variant. LHO bangs in with 3S. How do you get him? - Should you allow opener to make a re-opening with any decent 13/14 count (ie. a maximum weak balanced) with suitable shape, no matter the level of pre-emption? - Should responder's double at a level where opener is not allowed to re-open with a double, be for 100% penalties opposite a weak balanced hand? - Should responder's double promise some stuff in the pre-empt suit but opener can pull with not much defence (small doubleton)? - Do we just keep playing negative/take-out doubles by responder, and if they pre-empt, they get us?

Whenever we achieve something, we all want to show it off a little. It's human nature to seek the approval and admiration of our peers. What's the point being great if no one is about to recognise our greatness! :) I believe the vast majority of people who do advertise their achievements do it for the above reason, not to 'rub it in' or fake authority or anything like that.

Why not? If you bid 1♥ on four and partner raised with say 1354, you'd prefer to play 3♦ instead of 3♥, at least at IMPs. Completely disagree. If you have a min response with 4♥, it makes no sense that you would want to leave a probable 4-4 major fit at the 2-level to play in a minor contract at the 3-level. So the only reason why you would want to bid 3D is a game-try showing a double fit. True, you could be 4♥5♦ and if opener wants to reject the game-try, playing a 5-4 3D fit is superior to playing a 4-3 3H contract. But that particular situation is rare, so it does not make sense catering to it and therefore losing all the other game-try (or even slam-try) cases when you want 3D to be forcing. There's other ways to make slam tries than doing a game try first. I prefer, as often as possible, to have game tries be exactly that - game tries. So that partner can make educated decisions, and doesn't have to cater for your game try rather being a slam try. (And have to make some other forewardgoing move to let you make a cuebid or whatever, instead of just bidding game, and help the opponents with their opening lead and defence.) I agree with the sentiment about seperating game tries and slam tries. I guess I was assuming that playing simpler methods where you don't have dedicated slam try bids, letting the 3♦ bid double up as a slam try seems a worthwhile use of that bid at the small cost of not letting it be passed out.

Yeah, I was kibitzing you during the bidding of this hand Kathryn, half expecting it to appear on the BBO forums later :). 2♦ seemed a bit pushy at first but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. Dbl was not a good bid and the fault clearly lay with your partner. I guess I should have messaged you this at the time and saved you the bother of creating the thread. :)

Ah, right. Living up to the title I see. ;)

I think you are over-thinking the problem Ken. Surely any random expert in a pickup partnership, the simplest meaning for the bid is going to be the right one. This is a splinter.

If south knows partner will interpret it this way, then that seems like a good bid. But if south wasn't certain, I have a lot of sympathy for 5♦ and indeed the auction as a whole.

Agree with this. I have a few others I'd like, such as 1430, and maybe some jacoby/bergen structure, even a simple one that has a forcing Major raise. There is a long list of things that people say they must have that they really could do without. For example, there is nothing wrong with natural over NT, 3 weak 2s, etc.

New Orleans was always going to be another disaster waiting to happen. They should never have let the people try to resettle that spot after Katrina, but I guess when people call somewhere home, it can be hard to shift them.

I'd invite with the south hand always so I guess I'd be in 3 aswell. It would never occur to me that 3♦ is NF though...

In ACBL tourneys (online or f2f) your examples are not alertable (regardless of "alien to anyone only familiar..."), so are you talking about other events where these bids might be alertable, and, if so, what are these events? It doesn't matter if it's 'alertable' or not. These are bids that have ranges different to those who are used to standard american or acol style systems, therefore they are entitled to an explanation of these bids. The fact that the handiest way to do this on BBO is by clicking the alert button and typing in the explanation is incidental. Players playing methods that may be unfamiliar to their opponents should do the common courtesy of explaining their bid without having the opponents click on everything or ask a million questions which is very time consuming in an online setting. Perhaps people don't like playing against Polish club for this reason? Oh, I'm sorry, I appear to be drifting off topic.

I'm a passer, I'd double if the honours are in the Majors instead of the ♦ suit.

Twenty-Ten Nine-teen hundred I've heard it called the 'noughties'.