catatonic

wow ; I have good ears , I pass other than no opener I have no firm idea of what pt has , so wait and see !

well , I would have said that the most common interval before a card is played is something like 500 milliseconds ; set the autoplay at this and it would not be possible to judge whether or no it is an autoplay

roland , c'est un blague!! so you played in a 6-0 fit with the singleton J in dummy ; think you should post after less white stuff .......pernod of course ...and was the asking for rebid not giving the auction to make it harder for us?

couple of times recently I have been deceived by opps making marked hesitations when following suit with a singleton it occurs to me that a slight tweek to the programming would prevent this ; if the programme automatically followed suit in tempo with singletons it would not be possible for anyone either to set out to deceive or to have a dreamy moment ; if this were done and there WAS a pause due to the server or the internet , then there would be no questioning the ethics of the player concerned ...they would not have done it !

exactly so , a jump to 3 minor will the hands where you don't have 3 card ♠ support ; ok , may be a 3 card suit but so what ?

surely 4♥ is the correct bid ; not enough tricks to open 2♣ , but once you have bid 1♠ I have a game going hand due to my 3 card ♠ fit and a strong ♥ suit with a hand only strong enough to open 1♥ , what else would justify a jump to game ?

tks for your comments ; having given up playing the international tournament circuit some 20 years ago , I wondered if I was out of touch with current thinking imho ,2 things are important after the opening of a sayc type 1NT which defines the openers hand in relatively fine limits partner can decide to play this as a doubled contract [ forcing pass and compulsory x being a fun method ...try it some time ! it must be possible to compete at the 3 level when the 1NT's pt has a weak single suited hand and although the methodology for this is a partnership thing , there ought to be a standard in the absence of any agreement , and penalty x and 2NT the only forcing bid seems sensible for the average player to cope with , bid frequency analysis and the logic of not having 2 ways to bid the same hand escaping many!

attempting [!] to play sayc here with a partner who described him[her]self as advanced or expert , I opened 1NT on a minimum including 4 hearts and Kx of spades next hand overcalled 2S , pt bid 3H , pass any good player I have played with plays x as penalty after the overcall of 1NT , 2NT as a force , any suit as competitive only not fancying my effective 12 count I passed ; pt now became abusive holding AQx of spades and Qxxxx of hearts in an opening hand ; as a sensible discussion was not possible , I merely left the table so how do good players generally play these sequences ? am I out of step ?

3♠ ; the chance of this making is greater than than of 4♥ making which tips the balance

imho your ideas are not integrated correctly to begin with , presuming you play neg x's to a minimum of 2♠ , it is better to play 2♠ as non forcing so that a hand with few points but long spades can compete ; do you not want to be able to bid 2♠ on KQJxxx? if you have 5 spades and 10+ you double first showing 4♠ , then when you 'rebid' the suit it is forcing for 1 round ; I noticed in the world champs that one or two pairs played this as game forcing after this , the answer to your question becomes apparent btw , in the world champs I didn't observe a single sequence in which the 2♠ in the sequence you give as forcing

sorry , should be 3♥ of course

I use a different rule ; what have I got that I haven't already promised partner ; on this hand absolutely nothing , in fact it is about as bad as it could be shapewise ;pass 3 ♠as fast as is ethical

playing sayc on BBO with a pickup pt , I held J8642 J10985 3 75 pt was dealer and opened at game all 1♣ ,x, p , 2♥ p ,3[♦ ,p 3♥ p ,4 ♥ , ? I passed in tempo , taking the view that ...... there is only one thing that I could hold for a double here , this is almost certainly going off and 5♦ is probably a make partner then re-opened and castigated me for not doubling! who is correct ? in fact he held KQ109 ........ KJ8 QJ10963 leaving aside that I personally would have made a neg x of 2♥, I could have some sympathy for 4♠[ can only be a 4 card suit now ] or x , but he decided on the 0% line of 5♣ which got its just reward [ well not really , he got out for 800 on a misdefence] at this point I was unappreciative about remarks like why didn't I learn to play bridge ; but having mostly played with genuine experts over the years , who think as I do , is my thinking wrong here?do I have a style which is out of line ? wot you all think?

obviously 2nt ; can't be natural , as you would redouble ; this shows a minimum of a good raise to 3 hearts , so if partner just bids 3H you just bid 4 ; if you just bid 4H should take this as having a PE element but if he takes some other action , you know what to do ; presumably on this hands he[she] shows diamond support so your response is obvious in fact this is analagous to 1H , x , 2nt showing the good raise whereas 3H is PE

ok , let me put it another way ; what is the advantage of opening majors only with a 5 card suit ? unless both hands are 4333 the 44 fit generally brings in an extra trick , wheras with 5-3 the ruff is most frequently in the long hand , gaining nothing I think it is fair to say that the abiliity to find 44 major fits is an important factor in virtually all bidding systems ; being able to open a 4 card major makes this much easier , so why not do so?

interesting thread with a simple conclusion .......play 4 card majors ! clearly this doesn't preclude opening with a 5 card major if you have a 5-4 shape , and using a 2/1 which promises 10 plus and therefore a rebid 4 spades and 5 hearts is easily dealt with when partner bids a 5 card minor ahead of a 4 card spade suit in response to 1 heart [ 1h/2c/2h/2s ] so what is supposed to be the advantage of playing 5 card majors anyway if it is , as appears to be the case , better to open 1nt with single suited hands