bluecalm

Passing is awful. LOL. It's bid from old books. "You need 6hcp" they say and then you go to play bridge and you see that all the winners are always bidding with such hands... I bid even playing standard (but it sucks that partner may force to game with 17 or so but that the cost of playing standard). Playing some reasonable system (precision or std with gazilli or even polish club) bidding may only gain and there is basically nothing to lose. I refuse to play any system or with any partner which makes me pass this non vul.

1♥. We need 4 card fit anyway to fight. I think passing is very bad, it risks missing our 10+card ♥ fit while making their life difficult and it gains nothing. Lol pass :D

What do you guys think partner should do after the double with: x xx AKJxxxxx Axx ?

Yeah, yeah a lot of depends on system. I can tell you though that it doesn't matter much. Most hands will fall into my range anyway. I don't see why I should limit suit length to 6. Responder is auto bidding 3NT on 2-2-7-2 for example. If no pupper then my range is almost perfect. Puppet is too difficult because different people bid it on different hands. Anyway it doesn't matter you can make small changes and results will be the same. I am sure of that because I did hundreds of those simuls. ♠ is the best and ♦ sucks no matter what you try :)

Yes, as I believe most expert partnerships don't bash 3nt with those ;) I may be influenced by polish bridge culture though as everybody here plays jumps to 3♥/3♠ to show those hands.

English is not my native language so maybe I needed a coma there. I wanted to say that responder has either (2-3♠ 2-3♥ without 8 card major) or he has any 4-3-3-3 shape. Any English native speaker care to comment on meaning of my original sentence ?

Simulation (1000 hands): S has 15-17balanced with possible 5M or 6m. N has 9-14hcp 2-3♠, 2-3♥ without 8card minor or any 4-3-3-3 shape. Number of hands given card is winning lead (at imps): 7♠ - 221 3♥ - 192 3♦ - 176 9♣ - 190 High score of 9♣ is certainly surprising but overall things are as expected: ♠ is best while ♦ sucks.

Like for example: KQxx xx xxx xxxx ? I would open the bidding with this hand. If you somehow can't do that (sucky system) then you need to act now imo. Pass is too risky. I double hoping it's clear I can't have 4-1-4-4 10 count so partner will except at least 4-0-5-4 or more likely 5-1-(5-2). I think 4♠ is reasonable if we think partner won't be on the same wavelength as to the meaning of the dbl.

I prefer playing penalty double from direct seat and that is what we play with reg pd. From reopening we play that it's 11+ with at least 4-3 majors (more often 4-4). In most casual partnerships here in Poland we play double as 5m-4M (which I don't lik much but it's standard here). I may be easily convinced penalty double is not the best as profits from it are rare (but once they come up they are huge :) ), from reopenign seat I don't really like our convention. I think it's reasonable. I noticed Brogeland - Lindqvist play that way.

Spade. I will do simulation later. I am sure ♦ will come 3rd in it though.

I play multi landy from both hands (passed or not) but I feel that in balancing position there is a strong case for having some bid for hands with a minor. Maybe dbl as 5+minor 4major is nice in balancing seat or maybe all natural and dbl majors is even nicer. I don't notice many bad results from multi landy though so we didn't bother to switch.

I dbl. I think it's too weak a hand for 1NT. I can live with overcalling 1NT though. I agree that dbl is much safer than 1NT. People just auto double every 8 count while they need 10+ for redoubling. I also don't see how running to the best suit is difficult after dbl. Partner will bid his 5carder, 4♥ or better minor in that order. No problems here.

Yes, I described the interference in OP. Still missing 7♣/7♥ is quite bad for pair of this caliber I think. Missing 6♦ in first one is beyond bad. They probably had a mixed up as to meaning of 4♠ (one of them took it as ERKCB maybe ?). Very surprising from pair of this caliber.

Also sometimes you will wind up in 6♦ as partner will expect better hand for the double, that admittedly is rare. I can see double may work. Pass just seems so "normal" though. We need more opinions/analysis I may well be convinced to double being right.

4NT, wtp ? I think 5NT should be GSF. I am not into this convention and I would readily play without it but here I don't see anything else useful. I think playing 4NT as blackwood here is stone age bridge. If somehow I am forced to have other meaning for 4NT than t/o for minors I would prefer for example slam try in ♠ without ♥ cue. Doubling with things like 1-1-5-6 is lol. Double should be negative promising at least xx of partner's suit (preferably Hx). How is partner supposed to make intelligent decision if we can have hands like: Kx Ax AKxx xxxx for the double or some kind of offensive monster like x x KQJTxx AQJxx 6♥ one I don't really know. I hope my partner won't ever come up with such bid.

I guess you played off one top diamond. You lose if ♠Kx is with ♦xxx which is quite likely or if somehow someone has void ♦. Playing ♠ to the queen looks much much better to me.

3♠. Still no problems.

Pass. I think partner will take the double out on any excuse (like 7 diamond or spade void which he is very likely to have). We don't want that so pass. If we have game to make there is (admittedly small) chance partner reopens. Yeah, but it may work quite often I think, still it's a bit too much of a stretch for me.

3♣ and is not going to be easy to bid after that but there is no choice. Jumping on 4 (or even 3) card suits is big hole in standard.

I did the following: I generated 100 hands with the following assumptions: N/E hands : given S is 15-17 balanced with possible 5M or 6m W has 4 or 5 hearts and no suits longer than hearts Then I generated 100 hands. Then chose hands where 3NT doesn't make and W would make ♥ lead. Then I exluded hands where declarer made very obvious blunder by ducking hearts (2 or 3 hands). There were 35 hands left. I made very quick analysis on those (so may be wrong cause I didn't use DF). The results are as follows: ♠ return was right on 10 hands ♥ return was right on 18 hands ♣ return was right on 4 hands on 3 hands ♠ or ♥ return was right. I could have made mistakes of course but from generated hands it really seems like ♥ if right with ♠ being quite close second and club being the worst by far. I now changed my opinion to ♥ but I believe that GIB made reasonable play. It doesn't have time to generate that many layouts probably and it's quite possible ♠ was right on quite a sample.

I feel in real life most declarers routinely hide the lowest spot which makes it more likely partner has exactly 4 hearts. I think it's very close it would be very nice to have a program which would generate layouts with given constraints and calculte the best return based on this constraints. Since I haven't heard of such a software what is left is naive estimations. For ♣ return to be right we need: (assuming partner has 6hcp max if 1NT is 15-17) A♣ + Q♥ or A♣ + J♥ or A♣ + Q♦ or A♣ and 5 hearts For ♥ to be right we need 5 hearts always headed by QT/QJ and K♠ or Q♦. To me club return looks better.

1. Opponents pass throughout [hv=d=e&v=n&w=s5ha865dkqjt9cat6&e=sa83hkjda642ckj94]266|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] 2. Assume you open 2♥ (or multi or anything you have for this occasion in your system) Opponents pass first round of bidding then S overcalls 3♦ if possible [hv=d=e&v=n&w=s5ha865dkqjt9cat6&e=sa83hkjda642ckj94]266|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] Both are very easy slams (the goal is to reach grand in 2nd one). I am confident we would reach both being drunk on relaxed bbo game. Still two world class/elite players in established partnership missed both in one segment (they play precision so it's not like they have trouble agreeing ♦ or anything in 1st). Hands like this make me think that superior judgement of elite players is just a myth. They just blunder much less. Anyway, to the point. How would you bid those in your pet system ? Would you reach grand in 1st one if E's clubs were KQxx instead of KJxx ?

Yeah, that makes sense. The question is what will partner do with say: Qx Qx AKJxxx Axx If he is going to bid 3NT you will miss better 6-2 spades games. If he bids 4♠ you will end up in inferior contract on hands like the one in the OP. I like 3♠ nevertheless. 3NT seemed obvious to me but now I am not so sure. I am so used to playing "clever system" here that I don't take into account possiblity that partner can still have 3♠ for his 3♦ jump.

Hi, I find it really annoying that many td's today disable kibitzing in their tourneys. I understand that it's to minimize cheating possibilities. I find it not compelling because: a)cheating in online bridge is ridiculously easy. If you want to cheat you just send your hand via AIM to your partner and you have 80% guaranteed in every tourney. Additional profit from knowing opponents hands really doesn't matter; b)kibitzing world class players is both fun and educational; there are less and less opportunities for it because of the tendency of disallowing kibitzes. TD's ! Please don't do it anymore !

Hey Fluffy, do you know of any good French Standard writeup on the net ? It's one of the popular systems I know nothing about.