mikegill

Obviously anything you do could look silly. You could pass and find partner with Kxx Axxx AKxx xx where 7d is cold. You could bid 3n or 4d and find that his hand is QT AQxxxx Jx xxx (his actual hand) and he bids 4h and goes down 3 mercifully undoubled. My thinking at the time was that pass may be the percentage bid because there's a reasonable chance that the total trick count has already been overbid, but honestly I think this one is probably a guess. You do need kind of a lot from partner to make 3NT given how bad your diamonds are (not to mention you need partner to show up with either another spade stopper or LHO to show up with no side entry, and that's assuming he has 7 spades, which he may not).

[hv=d=w&v=n&s=sajhxdqtxxxxcakxx]133|100|Scoring: MP 3♠ p p ?[/hv] Choose your poison.

Pass and honestly I don't think it's that close.

I'm pretty conservative about opening 2♣ but I think I would here. There are going to be tons of hands where partner passes 1♠ and game is good, especially given it's red IMPs.

Pass/Pass. Somewhat close to doubling the first time (I would do it white at MPs I think) Doubling over a usually misfit 2♠ when the next hand could still have serious extras and has an easy XX to nail you is crazy.

LHO likely has a very good hand since partner couldn't bid with (presumably) short spades. I'm going to bid only 3♥. With all these spades I see no reason to go higher since surely partner will be bidding 4♥ if it's where we want to be.

Doesn't this mean that whichever heart LHO wins he can just put a club through? And anyway, are we really going to finesse in clubs, play RHO to have < 15? You'd have to have a pretty cold read on their tempo. It seems like they both have easy spade pitches. If we assume perfect defense then sure, using up a club stopper won't matter, but it doesn't seem like it's necessarily an obvious problem for them. If LHO has JTx and RHO AKxx, for example, LHO will probably play the T on the 2nd round and RHO will duck because he's afraid I started with QJx and his partner won't be able to win the 3rd round. Yes, LHO might have played the J under the Q with that, but maybe he didn't for whatever reason. There's another reason to play hearts from hand. It seems like the type of problem where East, holding AKT (or AKx) left, will hop K reflexively when we lead from dummy, but then stop to think and realize that he'll be endplayed if he cashes high and thus play his partner for the hJ and exit small in hearts. If we lead from hand, he may win the T reflexively and then be toast.

I would just exit a heart and try to make my contract as best I can. When making a 22 HCP 3NT stops being a good score I will go find a new game. If they can arrange to have LHO win the 3rd heart and exit a club then I guess I'll have to try and drop it.

Yeah my bad. Didn't consider the spade spots carefully enough. If you switch the s7 and s6, then repeated diamond leads will beat it.

I think everyone missed the boat on this one...

For a while now we have been playing -new suits = NF -2N forces 3♣ showing one of: 1. dump into 3♣ 2. forcing new suit bid 3. invitation without 3+ support -3♣ shows inv+ with 3+ support and is like OGUST. -4♣ is keycard and 4♦ is an ART slam try 2n->3n asks opener to pass with either a good suit or a really bad suit, 2n->3M is looking for a max and a good suit. This seems to work well - opener doesn't have to guess whether to show a good hand or not with a shapely weak 2 since he knows about opener's support.

I would never double at IMPs. MPs I wouldn't if I respected my opponents unless I thought I needed a top.

1) I would overcall 2♣ on the first one. It's possible we need to compete and it's also possible I need to get partner to lead a club. Yes, partner might go overboard but it's unlikely. 2) I would either bid 2♦ or 3♦ depending on the day if both were weak. Probably 2. If my choice were between 1 and 3 I think 3 is clearly better. 1 seems like a pretty big distortion to me.

Agree - partner has a good hand with usually exactly 3 spades. This is an easy 2♠.

I will preface by saying I don't play this style (where 2♠ doesn't show anything), so you can feel free to take my opinion with a grain of salt. My initial thought was 3♦. However, I'm not in love with this hand, especially for slam. While I'm a big fan of AJT9, it's really not a very good holding for slam purposes, unless we're intending to bid grand on a 5-or-7 hand. We almost need partner to hold a singleton club, or multiple club honors/length in addition to multiple other keycards for slam to be even decent. I'm going to go with 2NT. If partner can't do anything other than raise to 3NT over this, I don't even think I'm worth a 4N call. I'm finding it hard to construct a balanced <15 HCP hand where slam is great and partner wouldn't do something other than 3NT over 2NT. Maybe Axxxx xxx KQx Ax? Maybe he should bid 3♦ over 2NT with that? Again I don't really play this style so I'm not sure.

If I really thought my LHO was bad enough to double because he has a bunch of HCP (many of which were in hearts), then maybe I would think about playing 20 diamonds. But otherwise, easy pass. Partner heard the double too and he seems content to play only 10 diamonds.

Agree that if you're going to try this, you need to play 12-14, and I think you need to play 2n = 19-21. 15-19 is too big a range for minimum balanced hands imo, and 15-18 might be too big too. Sure you feel comfortable passing when they interfere and you have 15, but then you draw a 19-count and you feel you have to bid. I'm also not a fan of playing weak NTs when vul. I see where you're going with this - you can really clean up the stuff after 1♦ if you have the 1N rebid free and you actually promise diamonds, but I think the havoc it will wreak on your bidding of (easy in standard) balanced hands will be too much to overcome. I agree with awm, I think the 14-16 fits the best. Combined with strong 2N, this makes bidding balanced hands in competition over 1c or 1d easy. When you open 1d with 11-13 bal, you have an easy pass, raise or X, and when you open 1c, 17-19 usually has an easy pass (or t/o double if short and the level is low enough), and if you have 22+ bal you have an easy bid 2N/3N/X. You don't have to worry about showing extras with a balanced hand under 22 HCP.

I think it's losing bridge to pass a 4-4 majors 11-count 1st all white at MPs. Now I've given myself a guess, so I guess I would double and since letting them play 1N at all white matchpoints just sounds like a terrible idea.

At my table the guy passed and then balanced 2♦ making 3. I got endplayed in trumps as North, although making 3 seems to be the normal result.

Definitely 3♣ last time. Now that I've put myself in this position I guess i have to bid since partner has no idea that my hand is anywhere near this offensive.

1) I would have led my singleton. 2) Switching to a spade looks normal.

Never thought about 1♦ - 3♣ but we also do over 1♦ - (2♣) as well as (1♦) - 2♣ actually. We play 1♦ as 0+ so we play 3♣ here as a raise with its own diamond suit, and 3♦ directly is a hand that would raise 1♦ to 3 in std. Usually unless you have very short clubs yourself it's a safe bet opener has some diamonds when they bid 2♣. Agree that this approach seems decidedly superior.

I'm still hung up on East opening some number of spades

I led a club trying to be passive, but I wasn't really all that sure which would be considered the safer lead - a heart or a club. I knew I wasn't going to lead a diamond or a spade. Club finds partner with Qx and dummy with AJTxx, heart finds partner with AQxx and dummy KT9, so obv a heart works better this time.

Just thought I'd see what everyone's choice is [hv=d=e&v=b&s=sk7hj7543dkj2c986]133|100|Scoring: MP 1♠ p 1N p 3♠ p 4♠[/hv] opps are terrible if that matters to you (this is from a club game)