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If I have take over the bidding for the person who passed, naturally I bid 1NT now and don't consider pass or 2♦. This made me laugh.

Even though there are hands with 5 spades where I would overcall 1NT rather than 1♠, this is not one of them, I would have bid 1♠. Having overcalled 1NT I think bidding 2♠ now is pretty clear, passing is just bad.

Thanks!

Often I use use 'List all tables' to see the tables where my friends are playing. This means pressing 'List all tables', then 'Main Bridge Club' (now by default all 'Open Tables' are loaded, this can take some time), then 'Friends'. 1) Personally, I never use the 'Open Tables' option. Is there a way to avoid the Open Tables from loading first, either by setting 'Friends' as my default, or by using some shortcut? 2) Pressing the refresh button only updates the tables that originally appeared on the list. If another friend has started playing at a different table, 'Refresh' doesn't display the new table, I need to press the back button then come back again. 3) It would be nice when choosing to see 'Friends' tables, if all tables (rather than just those in the selected club) were displayed. Currently I need to guess whether the table is in the Main Bridge Club, the Relaxed Bridge Club, etc. Clearly none of this is exactly high priority stuff, but I thought I would mention it anyway. :)

Completely disagree, 3♦ would show a strong hand with only 3 hearts. Another reason why this is obviously invitational: responder has passed, prepared to defend 2♥, and opener has limited their hand by raising to 2♦ only, there is much less need for pre-emptive bidding now compared to a situation where the opponents haven't limited their hands.

Since everyone is agreeing on the start (1♣ - 1♦; 1NT - 2♥) I thought I would mention that I like to play that this promises 4-6 in the red suits - when playing this agreement the 4-5 hands go through checkback.

I would lead a heart. I would be happy to make a passive lead against a 2NT-all-pass auction, from a 4 small suit for example. The doubleton ten doesn't seem that safe to me though, so if I can't make a safe lead I would prefer to try to set up some tricks.

However the defenders may notice that a ruff and discard doesn't help declarer. The slam needs a diamond trick from KJ opposite 2 small, with the hand over the KJ having made a jump overcall in diamonds. Then, you need to find the ♣Q. Trumps 5-0 beats the slam even if everything else worked. So, even though Deep Finesse would have told you that 12 tricks are cold, in fact this turns out to be a pretty poor slam.

Downgrading from what - i.e. what would you bid if you weren't downgrading?

I do think that 3NT is an overbid, 2NT (unless East plays in the same club as hog where 2NT is Lebensohl!) looks normal. I might have doubled as West too so I shouldn't be too critical, but if we are going to double on a 10 count it would be nice to have more sharp card in the majors instead of a bunch of quacks. If West doubles and East bids 2NT, should 3♣ show a strong hand, or would it be analogous to a 1-level double then 2m over partners 1NT? I have never discussed this so would assume it was strong, but maybe it should show this hand? Still, even 3♣ might be -200, so West has to get a fair amount of blame too.

Here is a r.g.b post from 10 years ago (one of a number of similar posts over the last 10 years): https://groups.google.com/d/topic/rec.games.bridge/dYVFlxd940w/discussion Is AAR joking with us, well it doesn't seem that funny but maybe it is if you look at it the right way. Or are all of these posts serious, that doesn't seem likely either! I don't get it!

3NT seems clear enough. I would describe Pass as wrong, rather than bad. With a slightly better hand I would describe Pass as bad. With a slightly worse hand I would think Pass was correct.

WTF is this thread? Double seems completely obvious to me on all 4 hands. Straube, if you genuinely want to hear what people think why not post a question and wait for responses? Instead, you have 7 more posts (so far) mostly offering gratuitous lessons (in the A/E forum!). Also, although I could not stomach reading every post, I did get the impression that you have dragged Mike Lawrences name in and claimed him as a supporter, rather than anything Lawrence wrote actually supporting a pass of 3♥ when holding a decent opening hand, support for all other suits, and a singleton in preemptor's suit.

It would be a pity to bid 7♣ and escape the diamond lead, only to discover that partner has AJTxxx clubs and out, and there are only 12 tricks.

Do you find that people respond differently to your posts under the name AlexJonson from the way they responded to your posts under the name Pict?

Pass

I would open 1♦. Is this the end of a beautiful friendship? http://www.jeff-goldsmith.org/cgi-bin/knr.cgi?hand=qt+kt98+at92+qt2

First you said 4♠ was best, then you said Double was best, now Pass 'is the best action and it's not particularly close'! (I recall that in another thread you bragged that your intuition is "quite well founded though by analyzing tons of vugraph hands"). Here is a challenge for you. Find some vugraph hands with a singleton heart where good players passed out a 4♥ opening. What is the strongest hand with 5 spades and 1 heart that a good player passed with? I wonder if there will be any such hands at all.

Um... second hand low, third hand high? Don't you think we are being asked the meaning of this very unusual 3♠ bid?

Spade is completely normal, heart lead just seems bad to me.

Agree with the 1NT response.

I wasn't commenting on the merits or otherwise of using 2NT as a raise, I was commenting on your claim that invitational notrump hands are 'pretty common'. My experience suggests that this is false, and gnasher's post explains why - a 2NT invite has to fit a bunch of different criteria, a raise doesn't need a lot more than '3 trumps, inv plus' or '4 trumps, inv plus', whatever your exact agreements are. Changing the subject, my personal preference is to use 2NT as a raise because I feel a lot more comfortable knowing whether partner has 3 or 4 card support. I don't claim this is empirically better. It is certainly possible that my feeling more comfortable doesn't translate into winning more IMPs.

Those hands don't seem to come up much. It's quite a small set of hands: exactly invitational, clubs too weak to want to defend 2♣x, clubs good enough to want to play notrumps, not three spades, not suitable for a negative double, no five-card suit that can be bid conveniently. Agree with gnasher and very much disagree with awm. Far from being pretty common, in my experience it is extremely rare to have a hand where you want to invite in notrump.

What you said makes sense if it was a normal 2/1 auction regardless of GF 2/1 or just 10+, such as; 1♠- pass-2♣-2NT playing 2 NT here as natural will almost never come, and even if it does it is arguable if one shd stick his nose into this auction with balanced hand. However the situation here is completely different, LHO opens and RHO shows a very weak hand with 6 cards ♠. Agree with MrAce that this auction is completely different from a 2/1 auction, and therefore 2NT here is just natural. Here is an earlier thread with an actual hand.

As gnasher, I can count to 16 so I open 1♣, this is not tricky. Depends why you play bridge. If you are not interested in winning, but like to kid yourself that downgrading all these hands is evidence of subtle and superior hand evaluation skills, then go for it.