Apollo81

I'd have won the second heart in dummy and led low to the ♠Q. LHO wins and presumably returns a heart, causing the same diamond pitch. I win in hand perforce and run the ♣Q. Whether this is covered or not, I'll play a spade next. I'm assuming RHO wins and plays a black suit. Now I have 1 spade, 2 heart, and 2 club tricks, so I need to play the diamonds for 4 tricks. Obv this doesnt work if LHO has both spade honors, and yes I could also play RHO for ♣Kx(x) instead of playing spades. I think the above line is more likely to work.

While this is a great hand, I think that there will be more hands on which partner accepts where slam is bad than where slam is good. I think we really need partner to have a suitable hand with 4-card support before I want to be in slam. Even reasonable slams will probably go down if clubs break badly. Thus I wouldn't have bothered with the game try, would just have bid 4♥.

I voted "this is beyond words" due to the wow negative double by South and the wow failure to bid 4♥ by North. A Negative double shows an unbid major!

I'd bid 2♥ intending to invite one more time if I had no agreements about this auction. If I was playing the agreement Josh mentioned where pass denies a bare minimum then I would just bid 4♠

There's no inherent quality about this hand that lends itself to any call but pass. Partner would bid this way, for instance, with xxxx xxxxx x xxx.

NON FORCING

exactly

Squeeze

4♥ over 3♠ isn't a jump. No one's answered the second part of the post yet. If you had passed initially, would you act over 4♠pp ?

The first one only. Not much playing strength but at least it's 5 cards and it may be important to direct the lead.

Another possible play is ♦A, spade. That is probably roughly as good as cashing ♣A, but it risks extreme embarassment when declarer started with ♠AQx ♥KJ109xxxx ♦x ♣x To Alex's point, why would partner be leading a diamond if he held KQJx in clubs? So probably a spade back is alright. Replace the ♣x with any singleton honor and partner's lead is now viable.

I'd lead a spade for sure from KQ10xx or better and would lead a diamond for sure from QJ9xx or worse. For KQxxx and QJ10xx it probably depends on partner's preempting style. I would tend to lead a diamond if I didn't know my partner well. I should qualify this post by saying that I feel that I tend to lead partner's suit more often than average.

Another possible play is ♦A, spade. That is probably roughly as good as cashing ♣A, but it risks extreme embarassment when declarer started with ♠AQx ♥KJ109xxxx ♦x ♣x

ditto, ♦A, ♣A I'd like partner's feedback before making a more committal play.

=josh

NF

Favorable. ♠3 ♥J10876 ♦J972 ♣K63 (1♠)-Dbl-(3♠)*-4♥ (4♠)-Dbl-(pass)-?? *weak I deliberately didn't specify the form of scoring. State it in your post if you think it matters. State if you disagree with the 4♥ bid. edit: if you didn't bid 4♥ then it went (4♠)-pass-(pass) Do you act now?

Clearly worse than trying a black suit finesse, since you need someone to hold all three guards.

Agree.

Once again, I find myself disagreeing with my betters. I'm just imagining RHO's hand. Most likely he has 6 clubs, and I think the odds of my partner having anything that turns into a stopper seems grim with my second club being the 8 (even QT won't do it). It also seems safe to assume he has at least one other entry. So if my partner is balanced, they have at least 6 tricks in No Trump, probably 7. Actually playing 2NT seems hopeless, unless I could somehow get partner to play it (and he did have Qx). If partner has a balanced hand and I X, we'll likely end up playing 2 of a major. While I agree that this isn't the greatest of hands for playing in a Moysian, I'd rather ruff in the long hand (if I have to) than watch all of those clubs go marching home. One point in favor of doubling is that virtually all of my points are in controls, which means even if we end up in a 7 card fit it's doubtful that they'll score their 6 trumps separately. If partner does have a 5 card suit, we get to play in it, most likely at the 2 level. This seems a significant advantage over 2NT, where we end up a level higher and can't end up in diamonds at all. The main problem with doubling and then passing it seems to me is that we'll miss a lot of iffy games, particularly 3NT. I guess in spite of all the HCP I'm just not real impressed with this hand. If partner has a 10 count he won't sign off across a double, and if he has a balanced 8 count with 1 or 2 4 card majors...well, we may have 26 hcp, but I just don't see a source of tricks. Obviously, I'm missing something, but what? Actually it's not playing in a 4-3 fit that I mind. In fact if I knew we didnt have game values I'd prefer to play 2M in a 4-3 major fit. The problem with Dbl is that I dont think I have a good rebid if partner bids 2M...surely passing is too wimpy. Forcing partner to the 3 level also doesnt seem like a great idea on this hand...

Preemptive is the standard meaning of that bid. I'd prefer better spades to make a preemptive 3♠ bid on the given hand - at the table I would bid 1♠ since I'm pretty sure pard has a big hand double and I want to leave him room.

I guess I also need W to have at least 3 diamonds then

♠J, ♠10, ♦J, ♦x if necessary. I make if LHO has the ♠Q, spades are 3-2, and neither player can get a diamond ruff on the first or second round. If I had cashed the ♠A first, RHO, holding ♦Axx, could holdup the first round of diamonds and then give his partner, with ♠Qxx, an uppercut.

These hands are easy enough to defend that reasonably good players should get them all right. In reality, I'd say the average opponents will get one out of the three wrong.

2NT