skjaeran

If you tell the opponents then it's not a psyche, it's part of your agreements. In which case you can also cater for it. I don't think this is true though. if you point out that partner has been known to psyche a certain bid in a certain position, it is still a psyche! But it's still not an agreement as to what the bid means. Wrong. Excerpt from Law 40C1:

1. Better bid 2♦ 1st (preferably) or 2nd time. Now it's more or less hopeless. The best is probably to pass and let partner do his best in 2♥ and apologize. 2. Easy pass.

So you don't really care that if partner has ♥Ax or Kxx you'll have two ♥ stoppers when you're the declarer, but only one if partner declares? How are you going to ever find a playable contract if you insist on wrong-siding it? There's no guarantee that partner has anything in hearts. If partner has solid diamonds and need a stopper from me to make 3NT, it looks pretty stupid to reach 3NT with no stopper at all. How are you going to ever find a making 3NT if you insist on bidding it without a stopper in opps suit? :rolleyes: Edit: Josh beat me to it I see...

3♠, denying a heart stopper. If partner needs half a stopper, he rebids 3NT.

Unless I had a weak opening showing a major-minor 2-suiter with longer minor, I'd never use a 2-suited opening bid with this hand. It distorts too much, IMO. I guess I'd just open 4♣ and await further development.

4♦ seems pretty obvious now. I'm passing 4♠.

The reason is that this pretty much ensures that we fields our best team. Or the team most people would regard our best team. Our teams record since 1992 "proves" that this system works. Of course, those pairs that think they are good enough to be on the team might not be entirely happy with the situation. We send teams to the Nordic Teams Championship (picked normally), to the Rottneros Nordic Cup (Premier League winners) and the European Champion's Cup (Club Teams winners). In those tournaments we thus often field players not playing regularly in the open team for the EC/BW. None of them seem to have impressed enough to make it to the EC/BW team this far.

Using attitude leads here, I continue ♥A ♥8.

Do you have the bidding correctly here? If you were watching the same table as I did, I'm pretty sure east rebid 5♥ over 5♦. I was watching Lavazza vs Erichsen, with Bocchi sitting north.

Agree with the first line.

In Norway there are no trials. We have a one-person selection committee who picks the team. The federation board has the final word, but always approves the team unless there's some disiplinary/ethical reasons for not doing so. Occasionally we've had trials, or let the Premier League have status as trials. But only if the federation itself has been unable (financially) to send a team. Last time for the 2004 Istanbul Bridge Olympiad.

Frances' team just lost their semifinal match by four IMPs. I'm sure they're disappointed right now. But they've done extremely well and won a bronze medal (no play-off). Great effort, Frances - congratulations!!

Don't understand why I should lead the ♦A, although it could be the winning lead. My take on this is that it's much more the case that I give away a trick or a tempo. I like doubleton leads, with the right hand. But strongly dislike to lead from Jx (and Jxx/Jxxx), which far too often gives away a trick. So, by elimination, I'll lead a club. (A trump looks insane.)

Strongly prefer a 2♣ response here (I think it's best even with 3442). It leaves the most space for opener to show his hand, you're much better placed after a 2♦ response showing 5 (or a good 4-card if you prefer). Of course you put this on your system card and alert.

Comes down to style. My preempts are real preempts here. Thus, it's a clear pass.

5♦. No reason to dislike this as much as many seem to do. There's a reasonable chance partner will raise when slam is good.

Uh, Harald, do you do this often? You could go blind you know. LOL, an uninteded joke. Of course I refuse to answer your question, but I'm still not blind..... :D

You are definitely good enough to tell me if I'm missing something, but why couldn't declarer be Axx Kxx x KQTxxx? In fact, that hand is about a million times more likely than the actual hand in which he had 9 top tricks, no? Yeah, obviously you're right Josh.

6NT

2♠ for me.

This really comes down to your 3rd seat preempting style. I'd be careful here playing with myself. If I know partner doesn't preempt with stuff in third seat, I strongly agree with Josh in going straight to 7♦.

I don't see much of a problem psyching. I'd never do it against rank beginners, though. Not to be gentle towards then - they should learn that psyching is part of the game - but because I'd expect to do well against them by just playing normal bridge. Anyway, I don't psyche much - very seldom, in fact.

I normally upgrade a 17-count with a decent 5-card minor to 18 and open 1m. If not, I fear I miss too many games. Besides, I believe we're bidding more accurately after opening 1m - it's easier to exchange information that might be important.

EW might easily have been damaged here, both in the bidding and the defence. An adjustment is clear. Might not be clear that they should have a full compensation at MP (at IMPs it's obvious to switch to a low heart), but most probably I'd award them one down. Whatever I did for EW, I'd adjust the score to 3NT-1 for NS.

That's a bold statement! Care to explain why? And also why you stopped playing these methods? The main reason we won IMPs on most competitive hands is that opener has to pass with the weak NT and double (or bid) with all strong hands. Thus we normally got to play our partscore when opps had a better scoring contract reached at the other table (when opener had the weak NT) or competing was wrong with the strong hand (they went too much down or we would have gone down). It's not as much that I've stopped playing these methods as that we very seldom play against a 2-way 1♣ these days. And with new partners I haven't had the opportunity to play these methods for years.