Quantumcat

My system: 1D(1) (2H) 3C(2) (P) 3H(3) (P) 3S(4) (P) 4C(5) (p) 4H(6) (P) 5D(7) (P) 5NT(8) (P) 6C(9) (P) 6NT or 6D depending on bravery 1. 17-19 bal or natural 2. transfer (invitational raise+ opposite natural diamonds) 3. cue and accepting invite natural diamonds not 17-19 bal 4. control 5. control 6. RKCB (4NT is a heart cue if that were necessary) 7. 2 with the Q 8. club holding ask 9. 4 small (showed king previously)

If you play on BBO, you just can't take any inference from low opening leads or honour leads. (rule of eleven begone) They lead 6th best and T from KT72 and J from KQJT and all sorts of bizarre things. I think it hurts your declarer play skills to play against randoms on BBO. Much better to play with people you know in real life and play real bridge!

You could throw a diamond, but can't throw anything else. I'm not sure. If you could keep everything you still wouldn;t necessarily be ok with clubs: The 2nd spade could be overtaken and a club played and another when you play low, then east can play another when in with the diamond, then cash some when in with a heart. Maybe the diamond finesse for the ninth trick isn't so good. Maybe better to try for a club trick. So throw the 2 diamonds away, then play a club. East might knock out the ace of diamonds, then when he gets in with a heart, he could cross to west with the king of diamonds to cash spades. So that doesn't work. Also no good if east has no club honour, cause west has to get in before you get a 2nd club trick, with KQ. I did just think of something though. When you have 3 spades to the ace and your p plays the Q, you are supposed to play low, to force out the K while you still have a little card, IF you are expecting to be the one who gets in (or else declarer has a definite stopper and can duck, then you have nothing to play when you get in). You won't do that if you are not expecting to get in, because you won't ever need that little card. So, either he has TWO spades, or he has three and he is not expecting to get in. So then the hearts break & diamond finesse works. So take the spade and expect the diamond finesse to work and the hearts to break for lots of tricks! Or else for him to have only 2 spades, and you don't have to throw away a club, and west is never on lead again, so they aren't a danger.

alright, 5C then? You can't argue that the more you preempt the harder your opponents have it. And the larger the variety of hands you include the harder it is for your opponents to declare. I just went down in a 4H contract because I played the 2S opener to have short hearts ... she had 4 (I would have made had I kept all my options open... but you just assume, dont you).

[hv=d=s&v=n&s=shat42dkqjt873c75]133|100|Scoring: MP[/hv] The auction goes: 1D (2S) 2NT (4S) 2NT shows clubs. What would you bid. And what if the 4S bid was only 3S, or you held 3 clubs and one less diamond.

If you have a 2C bid to start with, it can't become a 5C bid. 2C vul is already a good hand, by bidding only 2 then more aren't you showing an actual power hand. Much easier to just bid 4C on the 1st go, and be consistent.

If hearts are good there are 9 tricks. Did he continue with a high spade or a low spade? I am presuming it is west with the longer spades? In case they are 6-3 and the hearts aren't good, duck, he can't hurt you, west would have to get on lead again if the clubs were a problem. If the hearts are no good then spades have to be 6-3 if you want to set them up and not lose a bunch of spades. But after you set up the fifth heart then you cant take the diamond finesse for a ninth trick, you would have to play ace and another then if west has the king you lose. Taking finesse is ok cause east gets it and has no more spades hopefully. So ... you duck a spade, and take the diamond finesse before you play out the hearts, just in case hearts dont cash.

but if the hearts are 4-2 you will only win 3 hearts?

win the king, AD, overtake the q of hearts (assuming the opps dont lead low from all small cards) play diamonds, lose one (assuming no nice 3/3 break), win the club return, finesse the ten, cash hearts and diamonds. (i am a beginner so dont make fun of me if this is bad :-))

To the people that say 2C bids aren't always 21+: this was one of my original points, was that if you are opening 2C based on extreme distribution but only say 14 or 16 actual HCP, somebody is going to bid, so you may as well open at the 1 level, and save yourself being pre-empted without having even begun to describe your hand. And if you open at the 1 level it won't go all out ... so you still only lose with non-bal non-shapely strong-HCP hands where P can't repond and nobody has any long suits. That's less than the percentage quoted.

Ok thanks for that. In the readers' section, there were three or four people objecting.

In a recent bidding forum, a hand something like this was opened 1S: AQxxx - xxx AJxxx Partner responded 2D and then the problem was your rebid. A couple of people complained about the opening bid, saying they would have opened 1C. My understanding was that you ALWAYS bid the higher ranked suit first, so that if you open say a heart and then bid diamonds twice, that can be a 5/5, but opening diamonds and bidding hearts twice shows a 6/5. Is it standard that there is a particular exception for when it's clubs and spades? Is it only for weak hands? Or would a stronger (HCP) 5/5 open a spade (presumably because they can make a game-forcing 3C after 2S or 2H)? And ... does rebidding spades ALWAYS show 6? It can't really ... I mean in 2/1 if you open 1S with AQxxx x Axxx Kxx and p responds 2H, you have to bid 2S, don't you?

So what is it? It's not a gambling NT

It's easy if you play transfers over interference! Perhaps this (but there could be other auctions): 3D, 4H, 5C, 5D, 5H, 6H

What does this show, anyway? A gambling 3NT with an opening hand? Can't be because you have the Q of diamonds. Thus it must be 23-25 so 6NT?

I thought any FSF, anywhere, was, "I'd like to make a bid now that would seem not forcing, however, on my next bid or bids you HAD BETTER BLOODY WELL NOT PASS, it may take a while to get my intentions across so be patient please ... and in the meantime describe your hand a bit too"

What is the range for a splinter? I thought just any hand that can force to game, or stronger.

In another post (something about jump shifts) someone said that it is better to have m-2M be a SJS because you get many more sequences out of it, because those hands come up much more often than splinters, and if you used it as weak there would be no continuation after the bid. So you get more auctions by having that agreement. If you use the 2C bid wisely, and only when you have a not-completely-balanced 21+ count, and only when you can plan how the auction will go (if your hand is too complicated to bid after say a 2S response, you might open at the 1-level, or lie a little about balancedness and open 2N or 3N) It will come up so infrequently (how often do you get a non-shapely, non-balanced 21+ count that will be not difficult to bid after a 2C start?) surely you will get so few auctions, that even if it seems sensible to use it, (will make the aforementioned hands easier) it will come up so infrequently that the slightly-worse use of being pre-emptive (or something else) will come up a thousand times more often that the little bit of good it does (as compared to the large amount of good the strong 2C bid would have) would make the pre-emptive 2C end up as the winner. Exactly like the above with the SJS. It will make those hands easier to bid, and come up much more often, than the more sensible splinter or other use, so the smaller amount of good builds up and ends up way overpowering any other use.

I thought the whole point of raising on three is to help your partner with his rebid, rather than deciding for your partner without even knowing what his problem might be, based on your own hand...

Yeah I thought a jacoby2n denied shortness, because you use it when you want to hear about opener's shortness, then evaluate your hand accordingly. Splinter's tell opener about your shortness so he can evaluate his hand.

yeah that's fair enough.

Choosing to have SJS doesn't increase the amount of sequences, because if you choose not to include SJS in your partnership, it would have a novel meaning.

Hi, I have the agreement with my p that you ALWAYS raise the major with a weak hand and 3 card support (makes responder's rebids WAY easier!). With the previous comment, you can't really have a 2NT relay cause otherwise you have nothing to bid on the 11-12 HCP with 4 spades. With the hand mentioned you could bid 3D, forcing, he'll bid 3S with a minimum, 3NT or 4S with a better hand and 3/4 spades respectively. If he bids 3S with a minimum, you could bid 3NT to show you're interested in his length of spades/diamonds (if you weren't, you'd have bid 3NT instead of 3D), now he'll pass with a balanced minimum or bid 4S with 4 spades or 4D with 3 spades and long diamonds and shape. If you had 4 of a different suit you could bid 3 of that and go through the same process. This sounds ok, doesn't it?

So, does this mean that if you choose not to use a SJS, then opener can pass your next bid?? If not, what's the point of a SJS if opener can't pass your next forcing bid? Surely all you have to do is make another forcing bid at your next call to keep the opener bidding. If you agree SJS in your partnership then if you chose not to use one, opener could pass your next forcing call if he likes??

To have a double squeeze you want both defenders to have 2 of the card you have Ax of, and one each to have one of the cards you have one of. So for the opposite, the defenders want something like this: [hv=n=sxhkdxc&w=sjhdtct&e=shdqxcj&s=shdaxcx]399|300|[/hv] Now they have something they can throw with no upset, east keeps his 2 diamonds while west can throw one, so west can keep the club which east can throw. If you choose the other way, just reverse the words "club" and "diamond" for the above. If they choose to do this, reversing the minors in dummy doesn't help, then the diamond is already high, so the club and spade can never be high, and they can BOTH throw diamonds with no ill-effects. For this to happen, west needs to be able to have BOTH a club, AND a diamond at the end, he throws the one dummy has Ax in, and east makes sure to have 2 in that one. So, the DS CAN'T happen (assuming very good defense) with both minors 4-3. At least one has to be 5-2 so west can only have 1 of them, and the one west has, you keep Ax in! What if they are both 5-2 with east? You could have a simple squeeze with the minors. You would just run your hearts, keep Axx in both minors, and when east discards a minor leaving him with 2 of them, you throw the other, can play A and K (or just the A if you used the king already) to get rid of both people's holdings, and have the third one for trick #13. You could find out by seeing how many hearts east has. If two, he might have 5/5 minors, but then he might have 6/4, in which case the DS is on. How do you know?? You can play A and K in a minor to see if west shows out. If he does you're fine, cause you need Ax in the one west HAS and he discarded on the other so its ok. If he doesn't discard you're not fine cause if he started with 4, you need the Ax for the DS. Maybe you could start with a SS on east and somehow figure out whether he has a 6-4 or a 5-5, and keep the Ax in the 4 cd suit if he has one then do a double squeeze. And if he had 5-5 keep going with the simple one. If he has more than 2 hearts ... try to get a clue about which one east is long in (was the ♣9 meant to tell us?) then cash the AK of it so you have the Ax of the one west has. Well ... probably what i have said is all wrong, and I don't think I can go any further. It's confusing!! Beginner's problems should be counting a defender's points and figuring out whether to play the K or J of a suit! Shouldn't be squeezes :-(