Quantumcat

I used to come here a while ago and people would post puzzles for beginners. I liked them. Are they still posted sometimes?

you were lucky pard didn't have anything in D, had H's & C's instead.

9 tricks. need one more. Club finesse is bad cause when it loses, heart comes back and lose 3 H and a C. Would rather take club finesse other way but have two clubs. Simple. Duck diamond discarding club on ace, then can draw trump & take finesse other way. Is this right?

4S - this is a weak distributional bid. If you were strong you'd cue raise.

When they have talked about 2 suits, but only agreed one, and you have a good holding in non agreed suit. They will probably want to ruff it good.

Hey, I am an Aussie in canberra, can't be too far lengthways from india, I think you'd probably be an hour left of perth, which is 3 hours from me, so 4 hours behind. I can play around 9-11pm so that would be something like 5-7pm for you. My regular partner moved to the US and I've just gone home for the holidays and there's no bridge clubs around here - thus I am quite keen to play. I will have internet capable of using BBO for the next two or three months before I go back to uni. Interested? email: u4309050@anu.edu.au

I was taught: - Partner has to have the balance of the strength between you (to get in to give ruffs) - You have to not have natural trump tricks (like if you had KTxx you'd lead your long suit to force decl and get extra trick in trumps) - the auction mustn't have called for something else (fairly obvious)

Well a low one for 5. Declarer has a million tricks. Probably 6 spades, 5 hearts, 2 clubs, don't need to give him a diamond too. Hopefully partner won't play another high diamond. Is it really possible to break this contract? No one has replied so maybe you can give us the answer, ralph.

I think it would be suit preference (the continuing is up to opening leader, count doesn't matter too much). Declarer will probably take a finesse at some stage and lose. If he does it before drawing trumps, partner will lead a heart through declarer to knock off a high trump, and if he draws trumps he'll have to lose a couple of hearts. So partner's managed to knock off a high trump. I have to have some sort of club or I'd hardly have overcalled, and dummy can't have any more cards. So declarer will take a losing club finesse and I'll knock off the other trump, leaving partner with 1 or 2 (or 3 even?? he could have JT9x) trumps by this time, plus 1 diamond, 1 club, 1 heart. Nice! Can declarer avoid the finesses? Do we have to make him take them? Even if we do have to, we only get 1 heart 1 diamond and 1 club? Not much point doing that.

Is it right that: 1) if attitude is known, then give count (if count known/irrelevant give suit preference). From doubleton, always high-low 2) if attitude not known, give attitude (either high or low from doubleton depending whether you think its a good idea to ruff 3rd round) This is what I was taught and I am very confused whether people are saying this is wrong or not. Is it right?

Maybe if you cash your two clubs, play two spades, maybe declarer plays a low diamond to his jack and you win, you give partner a club ruff, declarer gets 2 diamond tricks (partner keeps the ten hopefully) then leads king of hearts, you duck, leads a heart/diamond, you get two hearts/1H 1D, cash a club, declarer ruffs a club, has trumps left. You got 4 clubs, a spade, 1-2 hearts, 2-1 diamonds. Hmm, 1 too many but I probably gave him really bad declarer play!

This might be a bit too late, but, ralph, What if partner has five diamonds? If you lie and play high, partner thinks you have two and tries to cash another one. And with his four diamonds, playing high might give him the idea you have four and he doesn't cash his trick anyway? I suppose I am wrong but I can't see why. And Jlall when you have two or three you are automatically giving attitude about ruffing at the same time as count so why the distinction?

Yeah I was thinking the same thing. This hand is great as a pure lesson hand, eh. When I need to take extra tricks I still tend to want to take every finesse in sight without thinking about it properly, this hand is a good lesson on how not to do that!

In a suit contract, attitude of three small and count of three are the same, as are attitude and count of a doubleton! Encouraging is silly. What if partner has five diamonds??? Also plain attitude is silly too. You would play a low one (natural signals) from both four and three small, when having three and four is vital information for partner. It's not up to you to decide whether to continue diamonds, it's partner's, he's the only one who knows how many he has. It's your responsibility to give him all the information required to do the right thing.

What exactly is your question? You look at your hand, decide if you want to be in game opposite whatever partner has, does it matter what method you use, aren't you kind of answering your own question (unless I misunderstand, probably I do)? If you have a solid nine card suit and four little cards, if you have a balanced 25 count, if you have two solid suits and four little cards you might want to game force open ... Do you mean, how might a computer define a game forcing opening hand? Cause it is pretty easy to recognise one when you see one.

♠KJTxxx ♥xx ♦AJx ♣Ax Maybe declarer has this hand. He might lose a diamond if he guesses wrong, the ace of trumps, a heart, and a club. If possible he'd like to have the guess in diamonds made for him. So what he plans to do is win the second round of hearts, ruff a heart, draw trumps, play off the ace and another club. Now if partner leads a club or heart he ruffs in dummy and discards a diamond. If he leads diamonds, the guess is taken for him and declarer loses just the club, the heart and the ace of trumps. Playing the low heart is vital: if declarer wins it, he plays a heart to get the ruff later, but partner or I play a club to knock out the ace, then we cash a club when I get in with my ace of trumps. He's lost three tricks already and has to take the diamond guess himself. He has to take it against me since I have the ♦T (yay!) and we win. So anyway, what can we do against declarer's plans? If partner plays a club now it'll be just like if declarer had done the wrong thing and won the first heart ... but wait, it won't. He'll be leading away from his ♣K(J) and declarer will not lose a club! But it's too late to do it when I get in with my ♠A, even if partner puts me in with it now. Well, if I had the ♣K, I would discourage partner and tell him to lead a club (somehow) then declarer's plan would not work. Actually, if I had the ♣K, then he couldn't put partner in, and I would be able to lead a diamond through, promoting my ten. Ok I'm totally confused, I don't think my hand works. If you take away dummy's ♣Q it does.

I can get two trump tricks (cover queen, ace takes it, then J9 over the T). If partner can take two diamond tricks, that beats it. We give partner count since it's not attitude anymore. Partner will know whether to cash 2 diamonds or not (presumably he can't or there's no problem). We will get in twice, what's the best thing to do? If he has ♣AK and ♠A he's fine. If he is missing ♠A, he can't dump his little spades anywhere cause establishing the 2 diamonds means he loses 2 hearts 2 diamonds. And he can't dispose of them anywhere else. He can't be void or partner would have bid 1♠ over 1♥ with his 6-5 11 count. So missing spade ace is insta-death for him. Likewise for missing ♣A. So for what I do to have any relevance he's missing ♣K. Well then the defence is pretty easy. Tell him true count of diamonds so he switches to spades. (if we lied, declarer gets 2 diamond discards for 2 losing clubs!!! eeek) I get in with trump and lead club, he takes ace. I get in again and lead 2nd club, trick for us, 1 down for declarer.

Is this an actual hand? How awesome! If you were dealer would you open 2♣ or just 4♠? You definitely have your eight playing tricks :-P

Shubi, when you post, don't get so overexcited. Slow down and proof read your post to see if it's understandable before you post. Punctuation and paragraphs, especially. If you do that then people will understand everything you say and you can have a proper debate. I don't mean any offence, just a friendly tip.

Yeah because partner obviously has a few trumps, probably your queen and even the nine will be made into tricks. And you have control everywhere, so unless each of the opponents has a void somewhere, you have to be given control back very soon and you can always lead the trumps then if it looks right. I like your defence matmat, well thought out :)

Ralph, why don't you post puzzles on the beginner's forum anymore??

What is the standard range for overcalls at the 2 level? For me, 9 - 11 with a great suit and you like your hand very much for whatever reason (you would have to have a really good reason with 9 tho), 12 with a not-as-interesting hand. Flat 17 count at the most. So his overcall doesn't look undisciplined to me at all ... spade honours in the right places, a pretty ok suit, a bit of shape, some aces, no Q doubletons. What's wrong with his bid? Do you only overcall with 15 counts or something? That must be why too that people are suggesting bidding 3♥, if overcaller must be allowed to have a 19 or 20 count.

How does the mentioned squeeze work if you choose to do that?

What is it?? Is it a forcing bid after a rebid of 1NT?

Bioidentity machines aren't as great as they sound. My old work decided to get a fingerprint scanner to replace the paper time sheets. It took 18 months to get it set up and get everybody's data on there, but then I kept getting recognised as another girl (about a third of the time I scanned my finger) and there were five or six other pairs (and triplets) having the same problem. One guy even got recognised as someone different every time he signed on (never once as himself, no matter how many times they re-entered his data!). After two or three months they got rid of it and went back to the traditional signed time sheets, after spending about a million dollars on it, not counting all the extra administrative staff time needed to correct all the errors.