MFA

Our style is to stick to our lavinthal discards. If something deep is needed we still try to solve it within the lavinthal frame. Subsequent discards show count, but that includes even more lavinthal if several cards are discarded from the same suit. I find it dangerous to switch between different carding depending of what looks logical for the player in the situation. Partner might disagree.

Makes good sense. (2♠)-2NT-(p)-3♥ = four hearts is a little annoying because of the potential wrongsiding.

(2♥) - 2NT - (pass) (2♠) - 2NT - (pass) Does anyone have some good system here? For me it is just 2NT-system on, which means stayman + transfer. I just seems so silly with one of the majors already "taken". Particularly I am interested in a structure that would allow us to sign-off in as many suits as possible at the three level (without losing the normal stuff like finding 4-4, 5-3s majors and offering a choice of game with the latter).

... and meanwhile we would have had to bring in the sharp defense to avoid giving declarer his ninth trick in 3♠.

Hmm, I like garbage stayman... Also this structure gobbles stayman then 3m.

Yes, I would play small ♣. Guess this is a style issue, but I'm not used to that smith's promises a lot by the opening leader. Here we really don't have much on the side. ♥J in not enough to hint partner to look elsewhere, if he is not about to play hearts all by himself. A high club would force partner to worry about ♣Qx, but it doesn't deny the ♣J of course to play high ♣.

Double. I don't think this is so problematic. It would be unlucky to hit partner with 3 clubs also.

Not worth the worries. Even if we deviced a gadget to handle this problem it would just tend to give the opponents too much information on all the ordinary 3NT deals. The best solution would be, I think, not to open 1NT with a weak doubletonin the first place. But that would be bidding like in the 1950's, and it has been 60 years since that should be seen as a compliment...

South should place ♦A with east for his failure to attack diamonds. Given that it seems he then knows enough to try the heart shift.

yeah, why would we want to invite when we are perfectly capable of masterminding the auction and just bid 4♥. And partner's opinion is of no consequence since we are such good masterminds :) lol?

I used to think that this should be forcing, but I don't anymore.

I polled two good players who I trust to answer my questions honestly and who (of course) had already played the board. I suppose it's not a matter of honesty but of being influenced by knowing what the winning action is.

Am clearly outvoted on whether 3C is forcing. but I still haven't seen a hand where 3C is needed as forcing after: 1C (1D) double= exactly 4-4 in majors 2D ----- 2M=no diamond stop, no 3 cards in clubs 3C (so 3C won't be passed if responder has extra strength --but can't have, opposite the examples given). The first Quoted example has enough info to place the contract in 5c. The second one would probably already be screwed because they opened 2NT, but might try 4H now. I tend to agree with you about 3♣, hence my suggestion earlier. But there is a general metarule, at that is that 2♦ is gameforcing. I think it takes a specific partnership understanding if 3♣ is to be viewed as not completely forcing. Btw, I suppose that a neg.dobl. can contain more than 4-4 if the hand is too weak to bid the suits in the normal fashion. That is a strong argument against having a NF 3♣, because opener might be looking for a 5-3 major fit and therefore he wants to explore and keep the bidding low even with very strong hands.

A weighted score, yes. That would be a good way to solve this one. Here we could weight X% 4♥10, (100-X)% 4♥9, reflecting that 4♠ is an illegal bid. Before we assign the weighted score to the two pairs, we must remember to check if it really is a better matchpoint score for E-W that we are giving them, in comparison to the one they already have (4♠-2). If not, there is no reason to adjust, so the table result would then stand.

3NT. Ugly but I think we have to hope for the best. It's hard to see the upside of doubling again. Pass is too wimpish.

Same here. Routine opener in my usual precision context, but pass otherwise. Voted no-75%.

Cherdanno came to rescue, but I would like to answer your questions anyway. The calculations are flawed and the percentage results presented in this thread are pretty far off. That's why I called it fatal. It is just a coincidence that we reach the same conclusion about the right play. Usually we would examine the bidding and make a subjective estimate. That would be best. But if it is to be a theoretical exercise we could use the a priori numbers for an 11-card suit. My book here has these percentages for the relevant distibutions: 4-7 15,88 3-8 4,77 2-9 0,72 1-10 0,05 0-11 0,001 We rescale so it adds to 100: 4-7 74,14 3-8 22,27 2-9 3,36 1-10 0,23 0-11 0.005 The vacant spaces is a simple model. It assumes that we know about certain cards and then it distributes the rest completely on random. When we just know "something" about a suit, then the model is in big trouble, because that "something" might be hard to fit in correctly. Using the above percentages, we can see why it doesn't work just to 'give' east seven spades to start with and then calculate ahead. When the last four spades are distributed by the model, yes, surely west will get more than two of those four on average, but typically those four remaining spades will be divided 2-2 or 3-1 rather than 4-0. The result is that the vacant spaces-model (as you apply it) is very far from getting the right theoretical spade distribution. There will be way-way too many 3-8 or 2-9 breaks, while 4-7 will be more like an exception rather than the 3/4 occurance it should be. Therefore the output in the end will be wrong.

This theme is great fun. But here east can't really fool around if he has 4 clubs. And hardly even with three. Declarer could well have long clubs, and swallowing partner's stiff honour or H-T doesn't look too clever. :D Just play small as declarer.

3♣ is forcing, but there really ought to be a way to get off the hook before 5♣ when we can't play 3NT. Not that I ever had some ingenious agreements about that. It can't be right that we would have to fall back on an unexpected, undisciplined pass at some random point if we are to stay low. Perhaps 3♣ is better played as 'almost forcing' with 2♦ then 3♦ (or 2♦ then 4♣) or a direct 3♦ available for the nuts? Give partner AKQxxxx + an ace + some secondary stuff and it is very tempting to try for 3NT with 2♦, but 5♣ is a very different thing. Anyway, in standard I have to bid on. 3♦. I hope for a miraculous single diamond opposite so my values will carry some weight. Agree that 2♥ would have been a better bid that 2♠.

T/9 from T9x after dummy when declarer plays small to Q: AQ8 J7654 J/T from JTx after dummy when declarer plays small to Q/K: KQ98765 4 T from Tx behind dummy when declarer caches the ace: KJxx Axxx K from KT in the slot when declarer starts with a small: AQ987 J65 J from Jx when declarer leads towards dummy: AKT9x xxxx (this one seems only to work for my mix-partner, who is a blonde :D)

It seems that everyone is making the same fatal mistake. We can't just give east 7 spades and then count vacant spaces from there. We need to have a suit fully clarified before we can count it in. *) Essentially you are calculating as if we were told that a suit is breaking 0-7. But what we actually know is that a suit is 4-7 or worse, which is a very different thing. The method of vacant spaces can't handle such kind of imprecise information, so we have to split it up in subcases and look at each spade division at a time. I did that by starting with spades 4-7. I found that spades 4-7 is significant enough for TEN to be right, so there was no need to proceed to spades 3-8 etc., since in those cases the TEN would obviously just be even better. *) One thing is allowed. If we know everything about a part of a suit, we can count that part in, provided that no player had the free choice to follow to a trick with a card from outside that part. Typically, we can count in the x's of a suit if (1) we have seen them all and (2) the opps couldn't afford to play an honour instead of an x. If either (1) or (2) is not satisfied the calculation breaks down as 'restricted choice' joins the stage.

Btw, I thnk that cherdanno tried to hint that if spades were 4-6 instead of 4-7, it would be a complete toss-up to play Ace, Queen or Ten! Apart from the fact that we should not play the ace, because a cunning defender might falsecard J from Jx, so when the J doesn't appear the likelihood of Jx should be discounted.

Go deep. T and Q handle one specific trump distribution each, but the one that will make the side suits more evenly distributed will also be more likely in total when we consider the whole hand. If trumps are 3-0, the two remaining side suits will be divided 6-6 in total. If trumps are 2-1, the two remaining side suits will be divided 7-5 in total. (Given spades 4-7) So we play for 3-0 trumps.

South should double. As the_dude says we can always bid 3NT over 3♠. The only potentially annoying reply is 4♠, and that is not really so bad since 4♠ would be a big favourite to make should we decide to pass that (which would be very catious). It's not like we have any particular reason to believe that we belong in 3NT, so partner's opinion matters a lot.

In the old days where Michaels could be 5-4 either way I played X as competitive, expecting partner to bid his longer suit.