BillHiggin

It is impossible to scare a troll off by ganging up! They like it! Do not feed the trolls.

Yes! We know that it takes a lot of experience to learn that resulting is not a valid way to judge hands. The op showed enthusiasm over their first successful slam and a clear lack of awareness that the slam was actually not a good one. We ought to be encouraging the enthusiasm while, possibly, gently pointing out areas for improvement. Had the question about bidding the grand not been asked, I would advocate not pointing out those problem areas at all. I have no trouble recalling incidents from my early bridge experiences where I was quite excited about something I had accomplished and realized that I had made a major blunder on the way to that accomplishment and simply "got away with it". In fact, just last week ..........

As I see the premise, it appears to me to be much more of a problem for those who believe in a "soul" than for me. If I die but an exact copy which includes all my memories and life experiences continues, then that copy is me. But the religious folk must worry about the possibility that their true soul is now standing at the pearly gates while a new version continues life (with a new "soul"?). Of course, once this technology (which probably is actually not a possibility) is developed, someone will immediately note that it is a fairly simple modification to create multiple copies at the same time! Let the clone wars begin.

Strangely, the explanation was false in that it did not describe the partnership agreement, but it still did match the hand. So, was the double such a good idea? I see an infraction, but do not see how it damaged the nos.

So, Diana, what you are saying is that even though your answer showed you to be at least somewhat sane that we should be open minded about the possibility that you still might be a psychopath?

I have a concern about the explanation of the 3♠ bid (but regardless of the answer, my opinion of the lead is close to worthless). We are told that the bid showed a side spade suit, but nothing about whether or not it denied a minor suit shortness. It is possible that there was more disclosure at the table or that the HH methods were well known in this respect. In fact the hand was 4522, but that may or may not be implied by partnership agreement.

We may not have vugraph records, but we have the memory of one each Bill Higgins! Unfortunately, my memory has taken some really hard hits recently (several episodes of oxygen deprivation and a stroke). I watched Fantoni play this against Versache/Lauria. The opening lead was the ♠5 (3rd/5th presumably). I believe that Versace returned a spade after winning the ace, but do not recall the spot card. Fulvio drew 3 rounds of trumps, cashed the top hearts and ruffed a heart (the Q dropped doubleton from West. Now a top diamond was cashed and a trump used to return to hand. He then cashed the ♥J and then dropped the offside ♦Q. Those that were going to rely on a red suit squeeze will be pleased about dropping the Q! That works better than a squeeze for the 11th trick!

Silly bot! Why should he fail in 4♥ when he can let you fail in a hopeless 3N? One of you needs to stop this silliness. The bot will not!

Such absolutely required information as some indication of methods is needed! IF N/S are playing something close to normal 2/1, then South is guilty. South's first rebid should be 3♥ setting trumps. Failure to do so implies that something more than a void is needed.

My opponents must hereby cease doubling me for penalties! That always annoys me and it interfere with the enjoyment of the game (unless I wrap the contract around their insensitive neck)

IMHO, this is incredibly bad advice to give to a player who is confused about when 4N is blackwood! I would never recommend this relay to less than expert players (well, I would never recommend it period) as it will create issues with super accepts.

I tend to refer to the BBO ADV fdd card for estimates of what "standard" four suit transfers are. This is not perfect (and I don't know that a perfect standard exists), but it seems to match what I see most experts do when they are not playing with a regular partner. That source agrees with your suggestions for transfer then 4N. For 2 level transfer then 5N, the meaning is "pick a slam, 5H" With the given hand, the "pick a slam, 5H" option would be my choice if I thought partner would understand (which is not that likely in most casual partnerships with less than real experts). IMO, the hand is a little too good for 2 level transfer then 4N as a slam invite with 5 hearts. It is close, but holding 4 key cards we can be sure that partner will lean towards rejecting the invite (In my experience, they tend to get conservative when they hold so few keycards themselves).

Of course not. I depends on the speed of the bid, whether or not you slap down the bidding card, and is modified by intense staring! Edit - oops, forgot the [sarcasm] and [/sarcasm] tags that are required for this sort of online answer.

I don't think the free days feature best hand for human - video bridge does.

I am glad you asked about humans. We can use logic when we talk about what humans do. Not so much with the bots. If West were a human, we would be thinking "clearly a novice". The rush to cash aces is very much a novice strategy. When East won the ♦K, the human thinking would be something like "Clearly my partner has shifted to his doubleton diamond, now why his declarer dropping the Q". He would likely still return a diamond since this sequence of plays is absolutely inconsistent with a singleton club and four diamonds. But, your falsecard might shake him out of that line of thought since the Q play is so inconsistent with what he thinks is going on. Of course, it is tough for you to visualize the actual West hand on this defense for the same reason - this series of plays is just plain inconsistent with the cards he holds. If did know the actual holding, you would NOT drop the Queen and now East would have no reason to shift. There is a name for a series of plays that are so bad that they will convince an opponent that something else is happening and cause him to go wrong. That is called a "Grosvenor". In a way that is what has happened here. West has committed a Grosvenor by shifting to diamonds instead of the obvious club shift. But East is so confused by the illogical shift that he thinks your play of the Q is the actual Grosvenor (never mind that you would have a hand inconsistent with your bids). Back to actual bots. This sort of falsecarding does seem to short circuit their little bot brains fairly often. Sometimes they work against humans, but humans are more likely to catch the inconsistencies and figure the truth out.

Allpw me to be clear - I have nothing against tactical bids or psychs. I am quite willing to make tactical bids whenever it seems appropriate and in my youth I was quite willing to psych rather too often. But, you specifically said you would systemically open the weaker minor and that the reason was to inhibit a lead. Now you claim that was not a tactical bid. I dare say the tongue seems to have more than one tip. But then, it does seem that every time somebody mentions the idea of "mixed strategies" that they really mean they want to employ tactical options and for some reason they prefer some name other than "tactical"!

I certainly agree that neither version of BROMAD is not for the casual partnership. I will repeat the earlier link http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/lc-standard-over-opps-takeout-double/ and point out that the first page of that article covers the plain vanilla approach that is more appropriate for casual use. Of course, there is still the possibility that a casual partner may not be aware of those methods (after all, if you yourself were perfectly aware of them then you would not have made the OP), but those methods are fairly common. I may like the ideas in transfer advances, but in practice I have not used them. I stick with the simpler methods and am not too surprised when it turns out that partner has some other ideas that seem "standard" to him.

Perhaps you might consider editing the final line to explicitly say "I am the only one allowed to mention tactical bids in this thread!"

See http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/lc-standard-over-opps-takeout-double/ On the second page, Larry Cohen gives his version of BROMAD. What he describes as BROMAD (I would tend to expect LC to be a reasonable source for Bergen maethods - they did have some history together) looks a whole lot more like transfer advances. But naming issues aside, at least his suggestion looks a e lot better to me than this version of BROMAD. (I see that the Wiki article on BROMAD suggests that there are multiple versions)

The reversal of 2M and 2N meanings is known as "Schuler Shift" and is discussed(favorably) by Andrew Gumperez in the second article that I mentioned earlier in this thread.

Most common is to use "Jordan 2N" where a jump to 2N shows invitational or better raise of partner's major (mixed raise is the problem that is not handled well in standard methods (your use of Bergan raises over double is not so favored) In general, if you are thinking of playing Nt but not sure of game, the most likely road to riches is by collecting the doubled penalties the opps are offering. Poor fit and values just short of game are what produce such nice results as +300/+500 when all you were dealt was a partscore or a sketchy gmae. Since new suit after double is non-forcing (but is invitational), redouble and then new suit IS forcing to game.

Of course, the meaning of bids is what your partnership has agreed to, so I assume you are asking if the common agreement for a 2 level bid over an intervening double is that it is game forcing. That would be an uncommon agreement. It isn't game forcing because responder would redouble with any strong non-fitting hand. In a 2/1 partnership without specific discussions of these auctions (i.e. with random partners within the Intermediate / Advanced Club) I would redouble with the South hand and be ready to saw off anything other than 2♣ that the opponents try. In other competitive auctions it is common to reduce the requirements for a 2 level free bid to essentially SA levels (some, such as jec, refer to this as "Q-lite" meaning a queen less than non-competitive values). If you are interested in newer expert methods, try looking up "transfer advances".

The opening just barely causes me to gag - it is tha absurd free bid that makes no sense regardless of opening style. No matter what south expects from the opening, he has every reason to expect a pass with an absolute minimum completely flat hand when N need not strain to keep the bidding open.

My quarrel with 4♥ is that I expect the opponents to accept the transfer to 4♠! 4♣ might get lucky, but it can go wrong in several ways (the K is on my left and they find it even easier to bid 4♠ is one of them) So, I am a dog walker today - sometimes that actually works. 3♥ now and i will "take the push" next round (I have faith that there will be one) if possible.

What South has is an actual opening hand! And a partner that has taken a free bid (I suspect that only you know why - there certainly was no bridge related reason). What North has is a incurable desire to bid simply because it is his turn! North gets 100% of the blame simply because I dislike such nonsense as 120%.