Apollo81

I don't see any reason not to play for clubs 2-2. Cashing the ♣K first is slightly better than cashing the ♣A first, as I can never get 5 tricks from this suit when RHO has all four clubs.

I'm gonna go with 66% North 33% South Both the 3♥ and 5♥ bids are ridiculous, but North's bid is more so. South is about a king off from 3♥ and North.....5 over 5 is usually wrong even with some shape.....North has none.

p should not have bid 3♥

The only way this auction makes any sense is if North thought that two of his spades were clubs.

beating a dead horse, North could have accepted the game try, but as others have pointed out there's nothing wrong with not being in slam here

when i asked the USBF whether this 3s opening was brown sticker their official response was "no. this is considered an above average hand"

pass. double is way too much of a gamble

Qx K9xxxx Q AQxx I would want to get to 3NT on this hand. If I bid 3♥ pard may raise on Kx Q AKxxxxx Kxx Agree most hands with six hearts would bid 3♥. I still think 4♥ is an offer though.

Opening leads are hard. Bidding with interference is harder than bidding w/o it. I overcall on both hands. Interestingly I had KQJxx xx xx 10xxx unfav IMPs after (1♣)-pass-(1♦). I overcalled 1♠ (and so did the other table) and it went pass-3♠ and then poor responder had to guess how many hearts to bid with his 0562 hand. Shows you how a bid that has seemingly no merit can work so much better than passing. Pard gets the credit though....he raised to 3♠ and the other table was chicken and only bid 2, so our teammates had an easy 3♥ bid.

When I looked at this hand I was deciding whether to invite or force game, and I think I would just bid 4♠ since it's red/imps. edit: if 2♠ shows a minimum I would bid 3♠

1. Yes 2. n/a 3. you never did 4. Yes; it says "describe your hand" 5. Not necessarily. I expect opener to be something like 2173 and responder to be something like 2614 or 2605.

diamond

You don't think partner will take this as RKC for spades? I think it is dangerous to bid this way undiscussed. If I have no agreements here, I'll just bid 4♦.

This was another GNT hand my opps had. There were hesitations on double and 3NT, so I thought bidding on here was at best little sketchy. 6♦ was cold (push); partner has a 3442 18-count (I think). Didn't call director since 4♦ looked reasonable and very consistent with the player making the bid.

This statement is ridiculous. You are saying partner is not going to open 4♥ with x QJ10xxxxx Ax xx.

Partner opened 4♥.

♠AKx ♥Kx ♦xxx ♣AKJ9x all white IMPs, 1st quarter of a 48 board match partner in 1st chair opens 4♥, passed to you. you have no special methods besides RKC Partner is a professional player and is known to be a straight man (has his bids, doesn't fool around much)

♠Axxx ♥--- ♦Axxx ♣Kxxxx all red, imps 1♦-(pass)-1♠-(2♥) Dbl*-(pass)-3♥-(pass) 3NT-(pass)-4♦ *support Please comment on the auction so far, particularly the 4♦ bid.

I would not have bothered with the clubs. 4♥ over 3♠ and 5♥ over 4♠ since it's favorable vulnerability.

maybe someone should post a poll about who the most arrogant posters are :)

This was a hand from the D6 open GNT qual. Pard's hand was AJxx A9x xx Q10xx and was treated as a 4-card limit raise for no apparent reason at the other table.

Maybe my opinion is easier to understand in reverse. Since the game bonus is large compared to the cost of going down vs. making a partscore, it seems normal to keep the bidding open if there's any chance at game. Thus we have to invite very aggressively to prevent missing game when opener is at the very top of his range. Clearly these should only be accepted when opener actually is in the top half of his range. A fair number of these games will go down since opener will frequently have a border hand and responder was hoping for nuts. At MPs, staying out of 2NT or 3x going down when we could make a lower contract is at least as important as bidding all making games, since even if you miss game you can still do well on the board on overtricks. If responder has a hand that will make game opposite nuts but go down in 2NT/3x opposite a dead min, he shouldn't even bother inviting since we simply want to be right on frequency here. These sorts of hands should invite at IMPs. Consequently, opener should accept these invitations on any excuse since responder is being more conservative than normal when inviting. The given hand is a clear accept of a 4-card limit raise at any form of scoring. My experience with the 3-card LR auction is that the hands tend to play significantly worse. The given hand is IMO exactly on the border, so if we're going to use the form of scoring as the rationale for the accept, we should accept at MPs and reject at IMPs as long as pard is aware of the above philosophy. I can buy that my evaluation of this hand is wrong, and it is not exactly on the border. The comment about the stiff being in spades is interesting.

I think this is backwards from the best general strategy Which part do you think is backward? don't bid game when holding a singleton and bid game when relatively balanced? Or was my bid game lighter (as in this case) when vul at imps, but not bid game light when at MP? MP vs IMP strategy Quote so you believe that the correct strategy is to bid llight games at MP and only sound games at IMPs (and note for the ligth game at imps, I said "especially vul"). Dude, I think you have the strategy backwards not me. wow, i can't believe i have to explain this Everybody knows that the partnership should bid game more aggressively at IMPs than MPs. However, if both opener and responder stretch for their bids, then the partnership will reach a lot of ridiculous no-play games, some of which will be doubled. In practice, a lot of partnerships solve this by having the expectation that one player will be the aggressive bidder, but this can hardly be right in theory. At MPs, it is just as bad (perhaps worse) to go down at the 3-level or 2NT when you could make a lower level partscore as it is to miss game. At IMPs, it is (much) worse to miss game. Therefore we should take some risks to bid all making games at IMPs...this means invite on more (lighter) hands than we would at MPs and just force game on the heavy invitations. Consequently, we should accept invitations less aggressively at IMPs since partner has already done the aggressive evaluation. A nice bonus of bidding this way is that we get doubled in game less often since we will be accepting fewer invitations (these auctions are the most likely to get doubled). A way to think of a game try at IMPs using this philosophy is the invitation says "partner, I'm bidding this just in case you're at the top of your range." At MPs, an invitation is "partner, I'm bidding this just in case you're at the bottom of your range." Yes, these are different.

I think this is backwards from the best general strategy Which part do you think is backward? don't bid game when holding a singleton and bid game when relatively balanced? Or was my bid game lighter (as in this case) when vul at imps, but not bid game light when at MP? MP vs IMP strategy

I guess pard could hold the ♥Q....that ups a heart lead's chances/.