bluecalm

4S is tempting here :) It would be nice to check for 6 hearts and in case partner doesn't have them to play in 4S but I don't know if that's possible.

NF of course. 2nt as hand with 6 hearts sounds interesting. 2nt as comp hand sounds bad, you want to show your suit before they bid 3s if you're weak.

Yes, sorry. Doing too many things right now. The idea is clear though I think.

Say you have only 5-3-3-2's and 5-x-y-4+ in range. If you pass 5-3-3-2's and bid 2C with 5-x-y-4+ then opener can pass or raise clubs with 4-5 of them which is good for your side. If you bid 2C on 5-3-3-2's then opener must bid differently opposite your range and hands with true clubs suffer from that. So while 5-3-3-2's gain by you bidding 2C with them, hands with true clubs lose. There is a trade-off which you need to assess. You can make similar reasoning if you play Gazilli or something similar. Possibility of opener being 5-3-3-2's influence responder's bidding so strong/club hands suffer.

They are not. You gain on 5-3-3-2's hands if you can bid 2C with them but if you bid 2C with them you lose with hand with clubs (or Gazilli hands). There is a trade-off there. One day I pulled all the hands from vugraph where Meckwell/Lauria-Versace/Bocchi-Duboin and few others passed 1NT there. I went through all of them. I also played a lot of hands online and I was paying attention to this issue since forever. I am very confident about my judgement on this one because I did more research on it than probably anybody else. Just because 1NT tends to be a good contract at MP's in many situations doesn't mean it tends be a good contract after say 1S - 1NT. It isn'. By bidding on with 5-3-3-2's you get much better contracts. I don't have as strong view when it comes to 1H - 1NT. I think passing here might well be better with 5-3-3-2's and 4-5-2-2's. 2S on 5-2 is usually better than 1NT at matchpoints. There is also huge gain from 8-9 trumps heart contracts which you miss often if you pass with 5-3-3-2 after 1S opening, being able to play 2/3m if responder have 6+of them is another huge bonus.

I don't understand not redoubling. Nice play though :)

Ridiculously strong tournament. No Lall - Hamman though :(

A74 QJT4 862 T74: 7♠ - 92 Q♥ - 124 4♥ - 114 6♦ - 169 7♣ - 159 Which again seems expected to me as leading lefty's suit is usually very bad idea. I was thought that in vacuum it's Q from QJ9x+ and close choice between Q and a small one from QJ8x+. The situation here change though as we expect long fragment on the right.

I can't run all of those because dmpro is too slow. Can you give me one which you think is interesting ?

Yeah to play. I think opener should be 0-3-6-4 and max for that bidding (or 0-3-5-5 if you play 3C instead of 2C as GF).

I don't remember exactly now but low heart was about 100-120 cases worse (in 1000 hands) than Q♥ and other leads were significantly worse yet. I am now trying this sequence: 1NT - 2C 2H - 3NT and hands like: A75 QJT4 862 T74 Q♥ wins significantly again but if we move 2♦ to hearts now small one is better (although only very slightly, might be random). With: A75 QJ93 863 T74 Q is again better than a 3 and even ♦/♣ is better than low heart. My hypothesis for now is that this play is never good with 4 card suit and worth considering with 5 card suits. Can you point me to your source of this common wisdom thing ? I think I may benefit from refreshing mine...

That's the reason I posted it. I've led a small ♥ and it was successful (Ax in patner's hand, 9xx - K87x in declarer's). I tried simulating it and w/e constraints I chose Q was always better. I tried removing K♣ but still Q♥ is better. It seemed like I am running into AK9x too often. Only when I made hearts QJ9xx then small got a small edge. In all cases every heart card is much better than other leads which I think is expected. I remember this play from some old Lawrence book. I wonder if it's just bad or there exist some cases when it's worthwhile. I think maybe from weakish hand against 3NT it has more appeal than against a partscore which often goes down anyway and small ♥ can give away vital trick. Admittedly I assumed opener never has 5 hearts as this is a style I am familiar with (with 5 hearts you bid checkback).

I did some research in this area and here are my thoughts: -sentiment of most world class players is that semi-forcing is better (Meckwell, Greco-Hampson, Lauria-Versace, all other Italians etc.), some very good players (Fred, JLall) expressed this sentiment on this forum. -I am confident that passing 1NT is net loser comparing to bidding 2C with every 5-3-3-2, especially at MP's, the difference is quite big too, however: -there are some other advantages of not having 5-3-3-2's after 2C rebid. One is that you may pass without 6+clubs, the other one is that if you play 2C as multimeaning (gazilli or something) then those 5-3-3-2's don't get in the way, yet another one is that you can now raise clubs with 4-5 of them; -I am not sure if those advantages outweigh disadvantage of ending up in inferior 1NT partscore, world class pairs play mainly IMPs and at IMPs it's more likely to be good than at MP's; -This is relatively minor system thing which won't affect your overall results. I would stick to semi-forcing in not very serious partnership as it's easier and certainly at least playable. You will have good company if you play it too.

Double as 2nd bid of opener is always t/o in modern bridge. If you play wide range openings (11-21 etc.) then if you double with every hand with 16+hcp and reserve all other bids for shape'ish/competitive hands then you will not go wrong by much. I like 2NT to be natural in those situations but some people like good/bad which takes some hands away from dbl but it costs a useful bid so you have to assess if the trade-off is worth it for you. t/o of course. 2-2-(4-5)/2-1-5-5 o something and extras (which is nice 8hcp+)

[hv=pc=n&s=sa84hqjt4d85ckt54&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=p1dp1hp1sp2nppp]133|200[/hv] IMPs, good opps. Your lead !

In Poland there are tons of young people playing bridge :)

Btw what is the downside of just bidding 2NT with Kx-1-4-6 kind of hands like: Kx x AQxx AKxxxx or: Ax x AQxx QJxxxx ? If we would bid 2nt with those then position after 3D would be much easier to untangle (leaving only hands without spade stopper there so only very suit oriented hands like xx x AKxx KQJxxx or 6-5's)

I didn't played 3S as promising half stopper. I just thought it should promise it but had no agreement. I actually like what gnasher/others are saying here. I need to think a bit more about it and see what kind of hands are bad for half-stopper agreement and what are bad for 3S = no other bid agreement. My intuition for now is that this "2NT religion" is actually better way to play but as I said I need some more time. I will come back here with some summary/problem hands so we can have some more clarity on shortcomings of both methods. Thanks for interesting discussion so far.

I like the prospects of doubling with say AQxxx x Axx KJxx but on the other hand I don't like the prospect of bidding on after 2S with say: AQJxx x AJx ATxx which I will probably have to do if partner bids 2S with OP hand. This is why I think double should show extras so partner can GF with nice 8+ and accordingly he should GF with OP hand. Thoughts ?

dbl* 2NT (gf) 3S 4S *-strong hand wtp ? Imo 3C/3D/2S are weak/NF hands here. 2NT is strong hand with good spades and ♥ stopper and 3S is 7+spades, invite. We don't have any of those so we double and then partner with 8-9+pc forces to game and with 4-7 bids 2S/3C/3D

If you mean after 2C then no, only 15+hcp (very good 14 maybe) raise to 3C immediatelly. 5H-4C hand with 12-14hcp bids 2H as well as 5-3-3-2 hand in 12-14 range. This is "Polish style" I was referring to. Yeah this is style difference, that's why I said that 2H is compulsory in Polish/Italian style with minimum hand (if you don't have 4 diamonds). All bids above 2H show extras. I can have 4 clubs. 2-5-2-4/1-5-3-4 etc. Maybe I should bid 3S now with 2-5-3-3 etc as gnasher is suggesting. I actually like it and I think it makes a lot of sense it just was against my intuition at the time (which was that it promises half stopper). I agree that if 4C has any forward going implications I should bid 5C now. The cost of this is that we are in hopeless 3NT sometimes or we miss good 3NT (if partner doesn't bid 3N with Qx). I feel this hand should bid 2NT instead of 3D. Do you agree with that ? Wouldn't this hand bid 3NT after 3S ? Can you describe how responder reacts to 3S bid ?

No, only up to 2H. I am very interested in what 3S should show for example. If it should be just minimum hand then I should surely bid that I thought at the time that it should be half stopper in spades which I am now trying to investigate asking gnasher and kayin801 to explain. You comments are rude, read again the question again. You seem like clueless troll here and I know you are not so maybe you are in bad mood or something but I am irritated but tone of your comments.

Yeah, I was thinking about it. It seemed to me that we should have at least Qx/Jxx for that so partner could bid 3NT with Qx himself. I am worried that Qx A AQxx Qxxxxx will be clear 3NT for him now. What do you think 3S call should show ? So you are suggesting that 3S call is just bad hand and nothing about spade holding ? I see you guys all agree on that. It isn't obvious to me. Why is pass after X forward going ? At the time I thought I didn't make even one forward going move, the hand would be much easier to me if I thought 4C is forward going let alone pass.

You make it sound like it's some weird style or something so let me explain: Polish and Italian players including all top pairs from those countries (at some point in time, Bocchi - Madala probably play some art system now) play that 2M after 2/1 is 12-14 without 4card between 2M and 2C (here diamonds). Italians include also 15-21 with 6 card major there (Polish players usually bid 3M with that). Also direct 3C (after 2C) is 15+ with 4+clubs. Your example suggests you are not familiar with this style at all as hands with 6 hearts would bid 3H after 3D, surely ones without ♠ stopper. Yeah, that's my reason to making this thread. I don't have a perfecto, on the other hand I have 3 key cards (AK♣ and K[diamonds}) while I could have something like: Jx KQTxx xxx AKx or even Jx AQJxx Jxx Kxx. It seems to me that the hand is way above average when it comes to slam prospects but it's not perfect for sure. Now the question is if we should accept only with perfect hands or with just decent ones in the context and if partner should make a slam try hunting for this perfect hand or he should have more.

It isn't clear to me why pass is encouraging and I wasn't sure how my pd would take it. Is it that standard ? Maybe it should just bid 2NT instead of 3D ? I like this idea, keycard with clubs is not too useful anyway usually, thanks for mentioning it. Are you referring to our pass again ? I missed that pass should promise a good hand and it's still not obvious to me. I thought usual agreements about bidding after doubled cuebid apply (pass = nothing, bid = Qx/x/).