rogerclee

IMP Scoring, Red against White (Does this affect your decision? If it does, write what you'd bid at MP scoring or different colors. IMO, this is a harder problem NV.) ♠KT ♥JT9x ♦AKQTx ♣AJ You open 1♦ and it proceeds 1♦ - 1♠ - P - P x - 2♠ - P - P ? Edit: D'oh, gave one too many clubs.

I am thinking that it is difficult to say anything but 4S was the worst call.

I do not think 6D is hard to reach. It is not hard to construct a bunch of auctions that end in 6D, most of them sensible. W will never bid 7D with QJ of hearts, and E will never bid 7D missing so many important cards. It comes down to an auction where E is able to show a heart void. 2H-3H-4H-X P-5H*-P-6NT** P-7D-AP *: Congratulations if you have an agreement here that since 4NT is a strong two-suiter, 5H must be a strong two-suiter with a heart void. **Pick a grand.

1) 3H/3S. If partner expects more, I might pass (er, edit: clearly meant 2H/2S), but none of my partners do :). 2) Partner's preempt here should be very sound. I'll bid 3NT and pray, but just barely. 3) Odd that they have ten spades. Anyway, I'm playing the opening leader for a stiff, which means I have only one diamond loser after I rise at T1. If the lead was made quickly, I'm sure it is stiff. Since this is MP, I strongly suspect I can make 6, since I expect the heart K to be on. At these colors, if LHO opened on AJTxxx and out, he got me. I play a club back to hand and lead a small heart. If the finesse loses, I'm probably down, but if it wins, I cross back with another club (almost 100% that this is going to hold) and take another finesse. If trumps break evenly, I get to discard my two spades and a diamond on the clubs and get to enjoy a good score of +680, with a top being +800 in 4Sx-3. If it turns out that LHO is 6412, I'm only making 4, but I beat everyone else in 4Sx-2, so I feel okay about it.

1) 2H. I'd rather bid now than be forced to balance after 1S-2S. Anyway, this hand is not so bad; I'd bid 2H at any colors. 2) 1H at any colors, since I think both pass and double are worse. I don't feel very strongly about this, though.

I like the initial double, since I think a 4-4 spade fit is very likely to play better than a 5-3 heart fit, and if N bids 3C, I have no problem bidding 3H to tell him that I have reasonable values and 4-3 in the majors. We will run into problems like this whenever they find a save, but I am willing to sacrifice that to get to the better strain. I would bid 4S, not 4H, on the given auction at my second turn. I sympathize with 5H here, but I would make a forcing pass. With 5620, I would bid 5H. Edit: Oh, sorry, I thought that the E hand was the one who had to bid over 5C. With the W hand, double is completely automatic.

I don't see any criticism for E. How can he know about the two major bullets? What's to stop you from holding Kx AJ QJTx AKJxx? Anyway, I think it is tough to bid this slam, but after the 4D encouragement, I would probably go for it without cuebidding. I'd say the slam should be in diamonds too, except for the psycho-bidding by N, indicating that he may be void.

I pass. Edit: Not sure that second comment I made makes any sense now in retrospect.

I think partner bid okay, but I would've passed. Despite my Axx of clubs, I can't really make any really great judgments about partner's hand other than that he has a lot of black cards. If partner has two small diamonds, we're dead on lead and it's very possible we won't make 5. Thinking in another way, I am likely to cover at most two losers in partner's hand. Partner has at least 3.5 losers for not opening 2C with his strong spade suit. Consequently, slam is unlikely to be better than on a finesse.

I pass too. If I balance at the 2-level on trashy hands like this, it makes it very difficult for partner to judge what is going on whenever I have a reasonable hand.

Yeah, I don't think this is possible, but I may be wrong. If he doesn't have the heart A, then you, indeed, will squeeze him out of his heart guard to give yourself a good heart. But not before W cashes his spade, which you can't ruff.

At these colors, E would not be chicken to raise to 4S with 4 trumps and a stiff club. So E has 9 red cards exactly with at most 5 hearts, so at least 4 diamonds. The spade Q lead doesn't strongly indicate anything; he may not have led a stiff anyway had he had one (I would not). Anyway, I don't see anything much better right now than to ruff a spade to hand, force the last trump, win the spade return, and play diamonds, hoping for W to have started with J or Jx, and then go for a heart hook. But I'm still thinking about it! Edit: For clarification, this line wins whenever W has the J of diamonds, Jx of diamonds, or the stiff A of hearts (squeeze), and, of course, when the ♥A is onside.

Funny. I found it an excellent book and used quite a bit of material when teaching the university students. They liked it as well. What didn't you like about it? I agree. I read some of it and found it to be fairly good, and excellent for intermediate players. I definitely learned something from it, anyway.

I think that if you enjoy the narrative of over the shoulder style books, it is impossible for you to dislike Mollo's Menagerie books. They include some of the funniest and most imaginative plays I have ever seen.

If you never bid again after making a preempt you will be right 99.999% of the time. I think not bidding again is an excellent guideline, but I don't think it's always true. At least not 99.999% of the time. Maybe 99% B).

Opener's most likely hand is minimum balanced. However, (and I'm not sure how to compute this at all) I suspect that it is not his holding a majority of the time. I think you'd also agree that making an inverted minor on a distributional 9-count happens fairly infrequently; most of mine are actually just GFish-type hands that want to allow for the possibility that partner has a bunch of diamonds and that 5D/6D is better than 3NT. Maybe I'm being sort of silly, but hitting 4S and watching it make doesn't hurt me too badly. Watching us go +150 instead of +500 would hurt a lot more.

I think this is only true if partner interprets pass as nonforcing. I do not think it should be, though, since any hand with extras now has to make a guess without any input from partner. I don't know anyone that would play a pass after a limit raise or better at green as forcing. Well, for instructive value, can someone explain why? I don't know what "everybody plays" here; I hadn't thought about it before, and was just thinking what I thought it should be. Playing it forcing seems to gain a lot of the time, especially when partner's inv+ is a GF. It seems to me that if you play pass is NF, its only purpose is to say that you have a minimum without a spade stack. Any hand with extras, but not an extreme amount of extras, has to double. This might feel more comfortable at these colors, but if you're r/w, this is a tougher problem. Also, how about if the overcall had been 5S; would pass be nonforcing here too?

no. that's a perfect direct 3NT overcall B) I don't think so. I'm not sure what the most popular agreements are, but I like to x with a flexible hand such as that which can play both 3NT and 4H. Holding 4♥ was incidental. This is a 20 count which is just too good for 2N. Yeah, I understand. I mean x'ing to find 4 hearts from partner, as opposed to gunning it out with 3NT directly. This hand is always going to game.

I think this is only true if partner interprets pass as nonforcing. I do not think it should be, though, since any hand with extras now has to make a guess without any input from partner.

no. that's a perfect direct 3NT overcall B) I don't think so. I'm not sure what the most popular agreements are, but I like to x with a flexible hand such as that which can play both 3NT and 4H.

I think this hand type agrees with 3♠. Why monkey with 3♥? Not only that, I think it is much more likely that the opponents would have found a bid with 2 spades between them.

Not only is this pretty rude, I don't even think this makes sense. Why would pass necessarily show a bad hand here? Anyway, I'm a middle-of-the-line J-raiser. If I even had some kind of doubleton, the A would be good enough for me.

I'll admit that I have no idea what is going on. I like my hand, though, so I try 6S.

Well, given that I bid 2C initially, this is an easy 5D for me now. Had I splintered, then doubling seems right.

I assume 4NT is asking about spade control, which I have. Unfortunately, I don't have anything else. I bid 5C; I'm chicken. If partner tables xx AQxx AQxx AKx, he wins the post-mortem. Edit: This is also sort of a safe action that covers a couple different meanings from partner. Keycard? Don't have any. 4NT to play? I think 5C is possibly better.