bluecalm

Losers doesn't matter. What is lacking is strength. This hand will not be enough opposite many hands partner forces to game with. I am not saying you can't open I am saying it's not clear at all to open and many players playing standardish systems routinely pass this hand.

I feel that many people would be afraid of giving free spade trick/losing an option to take Kc. Again, my intuition was shaped by playing weak players as I never played significant number of hands against good opponents so it's obviously skewed towards prior percentages/disregarding possibility of them making any advanced reasoning.

Opening the bidding with N hand is marginal at best. I think most elite players would pass it.

W/e there is to show 22-23 balanced then 3S as minors and it's easy ride from there as S see there are no major suit losers and A♣ completes the hand. I consider it to be very easy grand to bid. For example: 2C - 2D 2N - 3S 4D - 4S (cuebid) 4N - 5S (2key cards + QD) 7D 13 tricks because partner has at least one 5 card minor.

I guess I am not thinking in terms of: "where is the queen" but in terms of "how many hands with the queen on the right are there". Anyway, it's the same thing, let's not derail the thread :)

I play all my bridge vs donks :( My default is to doubt anybody is going to go beyond: "maybe he doesn't have 11 tricks after all and I am not giving him a free one in spades" with both xx and x of diamonds. I see that it's likely that good player wouldn't play a club with xx of diamonds. Why ? It's good to know how often they have certain hand and then use judgement to determine if they play differently from xx-QT than from Qxx-x often enough to sway the decision. Anyway I take your judgement over mine any day, so now I would hook if faced this decision at the table, especially when prior probabilities are close. I am quite serious: I am yet to grasp empty spaces argument intuitively. It always seems like a gimmick to me and I need to see layouts number to believe it. Thanks for pointing this out :-) I pointed that out in my original post, however my intuition is that it won't change math significantly but yeah, this is a good point.

With spades 4-4 there are 3432 layouts with diamonds xx-QT and 3003 layouts with diamonds Qxx-T. With spades 5-3 there are 3003 layouts with diamonds xx-QT and 2002 layouts with diamonds Qxx-T. That would be it (well almost, we also need to exclude layouts which doesn't lead a spade but those won't change overall result). Now the question is why LHO didn't play 3rd spade having xx+ of hearts, he surely must hope we won't run with 11 tricks now. The source of this hope might be both Qxx of diamonds and xx of diamonds though (partner can have Qxx or maybe A♥). I don't think his play influences our chances enough to change our mind here. I play for drop.

I think I accounted for shape (analysing only balanced hands). I can't remember now for sure though. If someone is interested I could try doing it again. Also if you know Python and want to play with it it should be easy to use my old project.

I remember doing something similar for elite players from vugraph hands and results were slightly above 50% for 24hcp but it was difficult to isolate other factors (good suits, tens etc.) - the problem is that not all 24hcp games are bid and that introduce bias.

25hcp is good 3NT. 2 tens are almost 1hcp when it comes to NT play. Nines are good but not nearly that valuable. When it comes to suit games you want to be in one with 24hcp in general and with 22pc on 5-4 fit if it's not 4-3-3-3 on 4th trumps side. Singleton with 4+trumps is worth a lot: every time you have trumps 5-5 and singleton somewhere you want to be in game and every time you have void and 4trumps it also applies. Singleton with 4 trumps is good, you don't need many hcp for a game here. If you have 5-5 and partner has 4 trumps you want to be in game too. Maybe 21hcp is what suffice here in general but you often make on less. 5-5 opposite 3 trumps is not nearly as valuable. Bid a lot of games, try to make. Don't despair if the they don't make, take notice if the opponents let you make but could have beaten it. That will happen a lot. That's it more or less. Rest will come with experience.

Isn't it standard to play low/high = suit preference, middle = encouraging ? I mean, partner showed 6 spades.

You quoted only part of the sentence. What about trying to parse the whole thing ? I guess that what's in brackets is your take on:

Your reading comprehension deteriorates every month :( If you require 5 spades you would be on the tighter side among people I play with :-) This is natural style to me. I like it.

I agree that it's more comfortable to have 3D as natural and forcing when you have forcing hand for reasons you mention. My point is that you gain more having NF bid available here than you gain on forcing hand by having more space for them. If I have say: xx xxx AQJxxx Kx I am in the world of pain if I can't bid 3D here and I am afraid 2D will be passed too often as xx xxx KQTxxx xx is 2D too. Yes I agree, no doubt it's forcing in standard.

I agree with your point about what is standard, however this: Is not true. You can bid 3NT or 3S with GF hand with diamonds. I mean, 3NT is the game you want to be in anyway (and if you somehow have real powerhouse with S shortness or something you can bid 3S and move after 3N). On the other hand if you have 10-11hcp with diamonds you have no other way to bid it unless you include those hands in direct 2D but I believe 2D is weak in standard and partner will routinely pass 14-15hcp with say xx of diamonds when facing it.

What about giving a reason ? I mean, it's hard to disagree with "you should pick the best action opposite indicated range of hands" part so I guess there is something wrong with the premise ?

You are just too dogmatic. Just because they call it "2/1 gf" doesn't mean you should follow gf part above 3nt in sequences where it doesn't make sense. I mean, if 4S shows minimum and we have a hand that doesn't make good game opposite minimums then we pass. It's not another system, it's the only sane thing to do. You should just make clear what hands bids contain and then use judgement to pick the best action opposite indicated range of hands.

I thought that maybe 4C should show extras and thus be GF but maybe there is something to be said for playing (almost) mandator cuebids here as partner's hand is still in wide range. Anyway, natural principle is: old suit = weakness and that's what 4D should show here so I guess we can pass regardless of what exactly 4C is.

I had this exact sequence not so long ago. My view is that it shouldn't be forcing. If we have gf hand we can bid 3NT or 3S. Slam bidding is not a priority here. I also prefer playing t/o doubles from both hands here, they make those situations easier.

It's more like 15.5% for just 5-3-3-2's and 19.5% if you include 3-5-(Hx-4)'s. My view is that Gazilli does great job on most hands and it will be hard to make-up for loss of 1NT by improving on it, especially if that means you must raise to 2S with every 3-5-(2-3).

This actually could be arranged if there was some decent bridge program with API. I tried to approximate this with just double dummy result (after 1st lead) but having decent program to actually play the hands (possibly many times over) would be better.

The Law is very useful for beginners and completely useless for advanced+ players. One Polish super star couldn't believe people actually use it. I can't either :)

3NT is reasonable bid after 3H. Partner usually have Hx/xxx/Hxx for that so it seems unlikely we make 5m but not 3N. If we are not happy with that I would have thought that 4D shows minimum and 4C shows extras.

I'd double but I think this spot is difficult and I wouldn't be surprised if pass or 4S were better. Interesting but I think we would be informed about such peculiar style in the OP.

I think 3C is quite normal. We have shapish hand with shortness in their suit, passing seems like recipe for disaster. I don't consider it to be considerable overbid. If we have 15hcp or more we can comfortably double or bid 2NT with S stopper so that leaves us with 11-14 range and in that range shape is more important than being able to say if we are 11-12 or 13-14.