sathyab

That's not standard either. A lot of people play that a double of a constructive Bergen raise is T/O of the major, but double of the Bergen limit raise is simply lead-directing in the suit that was used for the LR. The 3c here would seem like LR, but probably not an alertable bid, it wasn't alerted at the table anyway. So X of 3c would say you have Hx or Hxx in clubs probably. Not that we had that agreement either. It's a pick-up partnership and you meet on-line a minute before game time. OKB 2/1 is supposed to take care of the rest. The answers are all in the book.

[hv=d=s&v=e&s=sat952h2dqj9873c7]133|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] Say you pass as dealer. The bidding goes p-(1h)-2c-(3c). You've played with this partner before a few times in on-line tourneys but "2/1, 3/5 vs suits, UDCA" is the extent of your agreements. Do you take any action ?

It appears as though the spade king is off. It's possible that it was on all along and hearts were 3-3, but I'm willing to pay off to that possibility and make only 11 tricks in that case. If the assumption about spade king being off is right, we should be in good shape. The 5c'ers can't make more than +620 (they'll face the same guess at T2 in 5c: spade King on or hearts 3-3, in fact easier spade shift then looking at dummy's spades) and we make +620 or +650 depending on how hearts behave; I'm assuming that if they're 4-2, I can get rid of my last Diamond loser on the long club. Even in a good field I doubt there'd too many pairs in 6c, so I'm not going to try to base my play on how they fare. This hand also brings about some interesting points in bidding. A 4d bid by North should show the kind of hand he held, giving up on 3nt, but open to either 4h or 5c. If South's hearts were weaker and spades a lot stronger, you'd prefer to play in 5c or may be even a 4-3 spade fit if it existed as long as North could figure that too. Does South always bid 3h over 3c holding a five-bagger, even if he suspected he could be the only one with a spade stopper ? If so, North has a tough rebid over 3h with no heart fit and no spade stopper.

There're a lot of hands for partner that don't include the Ace of Spades that offer a good play for 6s. Old-fashioned bids like this are typically based on a lot of stuff outside and expect to make 9 tricks if you have a balanced opener yourself. My vote is for 6s, bid what you think you can make. Also it has the virtue of getting the hand/rubber over with quickly no matter what the result.

I got a heart lead and played the hand on general principles: pulling two rounds of trumps and establishing Diamonds with two ruffs was the general plan and went down 1. But even if trumps break 3-2 and Diamonds 4-2, you get into trouble. Say you try to duck a spade at T2 and they force you with a heart. Now you pull another round of trumps with the Ace, then two high Diamonds and a Diamond ruff. Now you have to ruff a heart with your last trump if you want to establish Diamonds and then you go down anyway regardless of the club situation. I wonder what the best single-dummy line of play is, assuming normal distributions in trumps and side suits ?

[hv=d=n&v=n&n=sa632h986432da2c3&w=skthkdq9843ck9752&e=sq84hqjt75djct864&s=sj975hadkt765caqj]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] The bidding: p-p-1d-p-1h-p-1s-p-3s-p-4s With a club lead it looks like the declarer can always prevail by ruffing two Diamonds (one of which gets overruffed possibly) and eventually throwing West in with the last Diamond for an end-play in clubs. Is it makeable with a heart lead ?

Doesn't declarer's failure cuebid anything over 3s deny any interest in slam, assuming that they're playing some kind of serious-3nt schemes where a cue-bid below game is non-serious ? All cue-bidding here seems to be taking place ABOVE game level. Any idea what that means ?

In total agrrement with your arguments here Phil. Partner has already bid his more or less, if anyone should be taking action it's you now. This is not a sequence where partner gets to make the final guess/error, it's got to be you. It's not as though he made a waiting bid of 4d to either buy the hand at 4d (dream on) or to just give you a chance to double their 4s, failing which he was prepared to bid 5d.

2♥ is obvious. It doesn't promise 4, it's forcing and can just be an ongoing move on a hand like that. So partner raises to 3h, over which you bid 3s and partner now bids 3nt with a club stopper realizing that 2h was a temporizing bid ? Is partner allowed to bid 4h with a slightly stronger hand or is there no need as 2h is GF ? I've played a bunch of treatments like Gittelman over 1m to solve other problems but never quite come across this situation.

As an aside, what should the hand holding AKJxx AQx Kx xxx bid after 1d-1s-2d ? If you had held AKJxx xxx Kx AQx you'd bid 3c, forcing and showing club stoppers, inviting partner to bid 3nt with hearts well stopped otherwise probably support spades with Hx perhaps. But with the holding in the rounded suits reversed, bidding 2h would be natural so you can't do that, especially as pd who could easily have four hearts would raise. Is there any other bid says "I have hearts stopped, bid 3nt if you've clubs stopped" ?

A little late to the party here, but honestly I don't see 5nt as pick a slam at all here. Pick a slam is used when there are two strains to pick (from among three ?), with pass/correct options and bidding room is constrained to preclude expressing all of the above nuances. Here 5nt has to be GSF for the second suit. Almost everyone plays the raise to 4c as forcing these days, but if undiscussed, I'm sure it wouldn't be unreasonable to think of it as merely invitational. I wonder if 4d over 3c would be considered invitational as well, I hope not, but then again, it's natural and undiscussed, so not an unreasonable interpretation. I'd bid 7c which partner can pass or correct to 7d.

If you start with a 4c splinter and bid 5c over partner's rebid it'd be exclusion as you would not normally be cue-bidding above game level. If pd trots out 4nt you're happy to show your void, as partner is prepared for it. So 5c should be natural.

Thanks for all the repsonses. Most seemed to pass it especially if playing Bergen. I do want to add that the person who gave me the problem didn't tell me they were playing anything fancy at all, so the 1s-2s was the old-fashioned 'courtesy raise'. The problem was originally posed to me the other way, he gave me the responder's hand and aksed me what I'd do had the opener made a game try of 3c. I suspected that a game try with that hand wouldn't be a unanimous choice among a lot of good players, hence the post. The responder had AQ9x Jxxx 98x xx. Over 1s-2s, partner makes a game try of 3c and he adds drama by saying "your bid will determine if we finish 1st or 2nd in the LM-5000 pairs in Chicago". Apparently this was the very last hand they played in the final session, so it must have seemed that their final ranking depended on it. My inistinctive reaction was to say "Looks like someone put a gun to your head and forbid you from playing Bergen", but as I was exploring the prospect of forming a partnership with him in the upcoming summer Nationals in Nashville, something polite like "Oh, looks like you were not playing Bergen" came out instead. If you were playing the good-old fashioned raise of 2s to mean anything from a bad, shapeless 6 to a shapely decent 9 HCP hand, I'd have no hesitation at all in bidding 4s with this hand over 3c. I have great trumps and a doubleton in the help suit. As Adam and Josh Donn pointed out, this was indeed a game on a finesse, or in reality one of two finesses; spades were 2-2, Ace of clubs was off-side but, diamond King was in the slot, making it a fairly good game. He could instead have found partner with Qxx KJxxx 9x Jxx, which would be unlucky to fail in 3s; may be there're other hands that don't even offer such a good play for 3s. At the outset, it appears that a game try is against the odd for there is an excellent chance of wasted cards in hearts and yet when partner puts down a good but modest hand the prospects of game are so good that you want to be there single dummy. If you were playing Bergen, if it went 1s-2s, KJxxx x AQJx Kxx is a quick pass in tempo to hopefully extract some indiscretion from your LHO. On the actual hand pd makes a constructive raise and I'd think that knowledge that he has the fourth trump makes it a game try (here playing 3c as constructive leaves 3d, 3h as game tries) or possibly even a direct 4s bid.

[hv=d=s&v=n&s=skjxxxhxdaqjxckxx]133|100|Scoring: MP[/hv] You open 1s and partner raises to 2s, opponents passing. Would you make a game try if you were: 1) Playing 2/1 with Bergen raises. 2) Playing 2/1, but Bergen is a city in Norway, not a convention on your CC (lifted from a profile of an OKBridge player :)) At IMPs you would make a game try no matter what kind of major suit raises you were playing probably, but this is MP.

If you had posed this problem differently, by providing only the bidding sequence 1c-1d-1h-3c(inv) and not the opener's hand and then ask the question as to what a 3s bid by opener should be, my guess is that everyone would say it should be a notrump probe, clearly asking for a stopper. Okay, not quite everyone, I know there's always someone who'll be saying it's trying to right-side the contract with Axx of spades, so pard can bid 3nt with Qx or worse they'll suggest that in their partnership it's part of a completely different and exotic set of agreements, and that therefore the problem doesn't even exist.

The problem with passing is that pard is marked with diamond length, which makes it tough to reopen. Opponents finding a fit and stopping at a low-level part score when you have length in their suit are the easiest conditions for balancing. On this hand partner knows that you're short in Diamonds and that you don't have more than a doubleton spade given your failure to raise. Futher he knows you didn't start with a weak 2h, so it looks like the auction tells him a lot about your hand even if you pass. Several posters found the 2h bid pointless. I find the double misleading as well, in a different way, in that if the auction gets competitive at the 3-level, I'll remember that partner did bid when he could have passed and take some action that will turn out to be inappropriate. The 2d bid by LHO was way too strong, as there was no reasonable alternative, so if you double with those light cards, partner is likely to misplace some of the missing strength in your hand.

I wonder if it's the 2h call or making any bid with that hand that leads to this aberration. It's true that over his double, you'd bid 2s and opponents would probably reach 3m, but I find that somewhat incidental, the auction would have gotten ugly in some other way on a different lay-out. What do you lose by passing with that hand ? Partner will almost certainly reopen with a semblance of a decent overcall with either X or 2s. Over the X you can bid 2s, or his 2s bid gets X'ed, you can XX it to show an honor. I know it's tough to anticipate all these developments when you're faced with the choice of passing or making a bid with those 13 cards, but is that fundamental choice so hard ?

I think overcalling 2s with that hand is understating its defensive potential grossly. You'd overcall 2s with KQTxxx xx Jxx xx, wouldn't you ? Between that hand and AQT632 Tx Axxx x there's a huge difference. Yes, partner has passed, so chances of game are remote, but it being MP, partner may still have a role in deciding what to do if a part-score battle ensues. Say he had xx Axxxx x Kxxxx and opponents competed to 3d, he'd have a tough time bidding 3s with this hand. As for the choices between 3d and 3s, given that you have shortness in suits where partner is likley to have values, his tricks better be quick or it'll be tough to make use of them in offense. To put it another way, most hands that allow 3s to make would also beat 3d. But there're some hands where 3s will play for 8 tricks where there's no defense against 3d. If that's the reason why the 3s voters chose 3s, I'd agree with you. But if you chose 3s expecting it to make, I'd disagree. Anyway here's the hand. The Godess of Bridge had a cruel sense of humor when she dealt you this one. [hv=d=w&v=e&n=sk7hj6542dt7cq543&w=s984hkq8dq32ca976&e=sj5ha97dkj98ckjt8&s=saqt632ht3da654c2]399|300|Scoring: MP[/hv] All those who doubled and led a club, better defend this carefully to hold it to 9 tricks. Declarer wins the first trick in his hand as he tops your partner's Q and leads a trump and another. If you win the second trump, you better guess well to lead a spade and get your club ruff or you'll concede 870 :( Your LHO was forced to underbid his hand with a 2d bid, over which partner climbed in with a questionable 2h bid. If he passes instead, you can compete to 2s, over which most likely LHO will X showing a maximum for his bid and they will reach 3c or 3d which you defend quietly. And if you led a passive heart vs 3m, declarer has to play it carefully for his contract. If you bid 3s, your LHO's X card and the 4 of spades will probably hit the table simultaneously. BTW, if your partner had xx Axxxx x Kxxxx, a trump lead would make 3s quite tough while beating 3d should be reasonably easy whenever either of the black kings is well placed.

[hv=d=w&v=e&s=saqt632ht3da654c2]133|100|Scoring: MP[/hv] Bidding goes: W N E S p p 1d 1s 2d 2h 3d ? Pass, Double and 3s all seem to have some appeal.

So would I if the play went fast. When declarer tanked for 3 minutes, I'd spend the time preparing for the most reasonable continuations. I'd still duck this, thinking like Apollo. Unfortunatley there're a lot of players, even good ones who take a very long time before making plays which a lot of others would have taken little or no time at all to make. So I'm not sure how helpful the tempo is unless you know what kind of a player is or his reputation. You can make case for going up with the Ace if you thought declarer had a stiff club and then continue hearts hoping to force dummy so he can't establish clubs. I don't think there's much chance of finding pd with the spade Ace, assuming 5d is a reasonable bid. But that seems little more than a guess, so I'd play low, hopefully in tempo.

Had I had a stiff Diamond and 3 clubs and they had opened a weak 2D bid, I'd still pass. So for me, this hand doesn't pose a problem at all.

Yes you need a sixth club for a spade slam, but 5 clubs are enough for a club slam. You should be visualizing 5 spade tricks, 5 clubs, 1 heart and 1 diamond ruff for 12 tricks. All it needs it spades to break 3-2 if partner doesn't have the Jack of spades. Of course if they find a heart lead, you will need some other compensation such as a stronger hert holding or an additional club. But all in all, with the expected Diamond lead, 6c is a great slam, that I'd want to be there all the time. Oh, BTW with my regular parters, I don't have to bid 2c with only four of them to create a GF when I have 3 spades (Yes GF hands with 3 spades are harder to bid unless you play 1s-2c as showing either a GF in clubs or 3-card spade support with a LR+). So we would be sure partner had a 5-card club suit. And with four clubs and 2 spades and a balanced hand, we play 2nt the old-fashioned way, just GF.

[hv=d=s&v=b&n=saj9ha2d74ckj9632&s=skq432hj964d5caq7]133|200|Scoring: IMP[/hv] IMP tournament on-line, decent players, but not an established partnership, playing 2/1. Bidding went: S W N E 1s p 2c 2d 2h p 2s p 3c p 3h p 4s p p p Spades were 3-2, clubs were 3-1, producing 12 easy tricks. North said "A Diamond control is what I was looking for deperately. Your 4s bid in a forcing acution should definitley deny that". South replied "I was bidding my pattern, so you should know I had a stiff Diamond; you could easily have only 4 clubs" North countered with "I don't understand the 4s bid. But regardless, If you had AQ of clubs and two little Diamonds you might have or may be ought to have bid 4s". South says "No I wouldn't have bid it that way then". North adds further "You know I had a non-minimum when I bid clubs, supported spades and cue-bid hearts; even if I had only 5 clubs, 6c rolls home as long as spades break 3-2 even when I'm missing the Jack".

Clearing Diamonds after one high heart is a really good play. I think the crux of the hand is to realize very early on that you can't make it if your LHO has heart length unless he holds three without the Q and playing for Qx in either hand is not high probability so you're not giving up too much, as there're so many other interesting combinations that your line caters for otherwise. The most difficult play however is what to do if RHO wins the QofD and returns a heart. Winning high in hand preserves the chances of making when LHO had T9 or Q9 of hearts, but gives up on 4-1 break. RHO's Diamond discard is consistent with either 4-4 in reds or 5-3. But RHO has to find the heart shift to give you a headache. Nice hand.