MFA

well... sure if you want to be proactive in making it exciting. My personal view is that when you make bridge the most boring, you tend to win more. For me 2♠ is just bidding the hand, not being proactive. My personal view is that much theoretical bridge has a surprisingly strong tendency towards over-perfectionism and thus has the potential to suck one into timidity and cowardness in disguise of being 'sensible'. This is worse at the vugraph, but I do sometimes think that BBF really should have its name changed to UBF (the UnderBidding Forums) instead :).

I finesse the ♥T. Why shouldn't I? It's the percentage play, and if east has ♥AJ, he can establish only 1 spade trick anyway. The communication is no problem. If east wins the ♥J and returns a big spade, I can win and enter dummy with ♦A for instance. Then I knock out the second heart and take 10 tricks.

2♠ wtp. Come on, bridge is not about waiting for perfect hands and expecting disasters with every flaw.

To give a ruling we need to know about NS's agreements after a '3♠ gambling 3NT' opening.

Yep. Small to the J wins with 3-3: 36% Small to 9 wins with 3-3 or 4-2/2-4 as long as T is onside: ½*(36+48)%=42%.

I hope I'm not included in that pack :P, since I'm not ruling anything before TD has come closer to establishing the facts. For starters it would be nice to ask NS about their total agreements about how to get to 4M after a multi, and about their agreements on forcing passes in general. I'm not sure I agree with this. What is south doing with a forcing pass on this hand? Is he really hoping to bid 5 over 5 with a combined 6-2 fit for no particular reason? For me it's unclear if south intended his pass as forcing or not. This I agree with. It's not really realistic to hope for a description for this sequence in the system notes.

I don't think it would even occur to me that pass could be forcing here. North opens a multi and south blasts game. Why should that be a strong hand? It only makes sense to play this as forcing if there is another way to raise to 4M that doesn't create a forcing pass.

:P LOL :D

Small singleton.

and the West needs to see that he has to play his ♠K immediatly? (Assuming you take the 1st trick in hand and play a ♠ to the Q)? Yes, rising with the ♠K should be automatic with the heart suit in dummy. Especially if hearts are 4-3 :P. So what is my real chance with that line? W ♠K, ♥4-3, long club(s) without 4 hearts and without the ♦A? Looks slim. I play like gnasher. ♣K, ♥A, ♦ to K.

4NT. Bunch of cowards... xxx, xxx, ATxx, xxx and a small heart lead and diamond K onside and ♣ 3-2, +600. Next.

I try a heart. I think there is a weak inference that declarer has strong trumps when he doesn't key card. It depends on his level of optimism of course, but apparently he thought he was in for a good chance opposite 0. So I play for ♠AQJxxxx and some AK A on the side. Or ♠AQJxxxxx A A. A diamond at trick 2 would establish his 12th trick.

Unfortunately, the 17th is too close to christmas, there will be no regular game in One-Eyed Jacks on that date.

2♦. I pass if partner has tanked. But maybe that's wrong.

Partner had xxx, KQJxxxxx, Jx, - and the club lead gave us +200. I considered the ♥A for a long time (billw55: don't care if my plays "are tough to explain", or "not what partner wants", I lead what I think is right) and still think it has merits. But perhaps I'm influenced by a recent board in a Swedish tournament I played, where (strangely) my partner had the exact same type of problem with 5-4 in the minors and an ace (that might not be cashing). I was void in his 4-card suit. At the other table it went all pass after 4♠, and +650.

[hv=d=n&v=b&s=s83hatd7543cqt972]133|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] 4♥ - (4♠) - pass - (5♥), pass - (5♠) - pass - (pass), X - (pass) - pass - (pass). The opponents are very strong, natural players, but even though they have played together quite a lot on and off, they tend to be sloppy with their agreements. 5♥ was a spade raise with a heart control. Partner's X was lightner for sure. Man or mouse? Bonus question: If we assume that partner has a void, with what percentage would you estimate this to be in clubs, given our 4-5?

I think we have an absolutely terrible defensive hand. We can neutralize none of 1NT-opener's honours and we have just about 0 tricks. If it goes all pass to the X, I expect to concede a doubled partscore more than half the time (with partner being reasonable). Dummy will inevitably hit with something in trumps + side tops. What else? The perfect dummy for declarer.

Yes I should have mentioned in my post, I think it's a HUGE (uppercase letters no exaggeration) difference on the first one to be 2-1 instead of 1-2, which is why I pass. I think you might be exaggerating this, since some of the winning cases for 4N are where partner produces a singleton heart. With 2-1 partner has to cover the second spade loser with high card(s). But surely 2-1 would be better.

4NT Pass Pass

7 Variance is the one thing, I don't care about. I care about 1) Will some stop in 4? 2) What are my odds in 7? I'm not sure what to expect from a US club game, but unless it's terrible, I expect the field to be in slam. Maggie's ~70% seems about right. That's enough for me.

Rude if no screens. Acceptable with screens, provided that dummy doesn't slow down the play in any way. Even the first time declarer is required to call for a card twice, it's annoying.

2 keycards + a void in a suit above trumps (♣). 5NT: unspecified void, odd# keycards 6x: void in that suit, 2 keycards 6trumps: void in a suit above trumps, 2 keycards. Here he should have a spade void, ♦A, ♣K.

I don't like the idea of automatically bidding 6♣ on the way to 6♦, just in case. If we are seriously considering 5♦, then we can't suddenly bid 6♣ - a grand slam try. There is no room between 6♣ and 6♦, so partner has to decide right there. Very different from a 1♠-5♣-6♣ sequence, where 6♣ sensibly can be pretty wide range. Here we have to accept a great part of the responsibility of getting the quantitative evaluation right. We can only bid 6♣ when our hand really merits a grand slam try, and it doesn't if we were just about to bid 5♦. If we feel just a little too strong for 5♦, then we bid 6♦ and hope for a good catch, instead of inducing partner to bidding too high with that same good dummy. 6♦ is not so flexible for grand slam, but 6 takes precedence and we are fooling ourselves if we think that a very wide ranged 6♣ will get us better results. Of course, if we think this hand simply merits a 6♣ bid, then it's a different story. Then we go ahead and bid 6♣ ofc.

[hv=d=n&v=n&s=sa8654hkq83dk652c]133|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] 1♦ - (5♣) - ? System is 12-14NT, 5c majors, 1♣ on 44m, 1♦: 4+ or 4432. EDIT: the second 7♦ in the poll was meant to be 7♣.

Always wanted to try a 2NT psych. Maybe this is the time for it, since it seems unlikely that partner will not check back for majors, when I'm 1-1. So a 6NT response would be very unlucky.