BunnyGo

FYP, used all over these forums and the internet as "fixed your post"--and explained in that thread you mentioned here. Note the bold words that differ from the original post. They are different and (I think) clarify and correct Phil's meaning. I'm sorry you're finding these posts frustrating. I hope you're the only one.

The "view new content" button does not appear to be bringing up posts in the new forum for me. Is there something I should do on my end (besides resetting safari's cache, and restarting) or is this a hiccup in getting the forum going? Edit: upon further examination, it's not that it doesn't appear--it's that it doesn't stay (but with a different color to suggest I've read it before, unlike the other forums.

FYP for clarity.

+1.

For me (and I think many players) judgement came (and still comes) when I'm able to think about how my hand is going to be played opposite different dummies and different opponent distributions (based on clues in the bidding). This is very difficult--I still don't do it as well as I'd like. The rule of 13 HCP is a baseline rule, that I think is a good starting point for many players because it requires less difficult judgement (which is harder to quantify in simple rules, and comes with experience) and helps to teach beginners what a "good" hand is. As I understand it, as players card playing ability improves, they'll realize how some 12 or 11 point hands are going to play very well (despite a lack of honors) and bid appropriately. "The rule of X" is what people use to try and guide their judgement when they are unsure what to do. When I'm looking at a hand and can't decide how to bid it based on imagination of what the other hands are (if it's later in the bidding) or experience, then I try to see how the hand fits with several different "rules of X". I don't think many experts do this, but it's how I supplement my judgement when it leaves me with that "I have no idea" feeling. However, the "rules" are simply ideas that people have had to try and quantify their judgement. None of them always work, and they are all simply tools to try and bring you to the correct answer. I wouldn't say any of them is more or less sophisticated, or correct, I'd say that they are trying to provide you with a guideline for reasonable auctions when your experiences cannot guide the way. I'll say that as I have learned to play over the past several years, I've gone from being VERY conservative with my openings (13 HCP) to VERY aggressive (13 cards) and back and forth trying to find a good balance. It takes practice, experience, and getting doubled 4 times in 6 hands in partscores by better players to figure out what works specifically for you and your partner :) The numbers you're learning now about hand assessment are not wrong, they are the first rule that everyone uses. We then supplement it with experiences and other rules to try and make decisions that are tough. I highly recommend Fred's software. It's a bit dry (for my taste), but if you can learn the bidding and (more importantly IMHO) cardplay lessons he provides, you'll quickly find yourself as a solid intermediate player. Feel free to try out your judgement even as a novice, sometimes you'll get in trouble, sometimes it'll work and slowly you'll figure out what your judgement should be. My partner and I discuss it after hands, and play around with it (and have ever since we were novices/beginners together). One caveat, as you improve and start playing better players you'll find that aggression works very well against other beginners (who generally don't double to penalize you) but that advanced and expert players will knock you down if you're too pushy. I've had to try and adjust my judgement every time I start playing with a different class of players, because I realized that my old judgement was based on the opponents weaknesses, but I was not playing "good" bridge. One last piece of advice based on how I learned (and still learn) the game. I learned to play cards first. I didn't learn good bidding till much later. To this day I'm a much better card player than I am bidder. I find it more interesting, and more useful. I also think that it's the single most important thing a novice-beginner-intermediate player can focus on. You'll play every hand better as you learn card play skills, and you'll find yourself winning more as you out play your opponents who have lots of fancy bidding and "rules of X" to (generally) get to the same contract. In summary, if you're finding the bidding frustrating (like I did and do) learn to play the cards better--it's more fun, and it'll improve your game a lot more than learning to bid better. Also when you do bid to a bad spot, your card play can sometimes save you, but good bidding can't save bad card play. Hope this helps, good luck! Edit: To adress the OP as well, I agree with your judgement for all the reasons that Frances expressed so well. 1♥ is a very good bid.

Very nice. I remember my first (and so far only) time accomplishing this as declarer, and was very pleased with myself. Very impressive to have (but for the grace of partner) accomplished it on defense.

<bump> so we have 4 players? Three more?

For all of the above reasons, you should *generally* not try to trump things with the long trump suit just to do so. If there's another reason (set up a long suit in dummy, or something else) then ok, but don't trump things with the long trump with no other reason in mind. They're your tricks anyways.

bid what you have 4♥ ( or 7♦ :))

The best part of all that was the name "tachyon" for faster than light neutrinos. Led to all sorts of great SciFi usage, cause it just sounds cool.

Sorry I was unclear. The finesse here was the percentage play, and actually I was surprised to see that the drop was 8% better--I thought it'd be less. I was suggesting (as wyman said) that the drop is not so bad that if you think there's a reason (LHO has a twitch or something) to try it, then ok. As long as you know what the "correct" play is.

The difference in odds is close enough that "table feel" is not a bad reason to go anti-percentage.

The two options to consider are slightly hard to evaluate since we aren't told the specific club spots: Option 1) Over take the queen and hope to set up club tricks (works 3-3, so probably not great). Option 2) Win the queen and lead the heart ten to set up heart tricks. I think option 2 is better, but I could easily be missing the correct option 3.

One rule of thumb, if you or partner have already made a penalty double, or passed a conventional double to convert it for penalty then all future doubles are penalty no matter what they'd be otherwise.

And if your partner reams you out by saying, "9 NEVER!" just nod and say, "next hand."

I don't think that a heart splinter accurately describes p's hand. I think a 2♦ bid followed by spades and spades does better.

:)

absolutely...I was being honest, you'd just reminded me of a pet peeve of mine. I really do hate when people complain that megavideo is gone and youtube has ads, and all that.

My pet peeve is people thinking all creative content should be free. And that everything on the internet in particular should be free. All that data and hosting, no money. WEEEE. *this is not to say, I'm not a frequent user of sites that offer such content illegally for free, simply that I don't think I'm owed it and don't mind when these sites get shut down or try to go legit with ads.

I'd pass, but I'm guessing you bid 3NT.

So to mess with the bots I just need to stick in a penalty double of their suit at a low level, and then they'll never "run" back there?

I think this exactly what Woolsey was advocating as a good matchpoint bid.

disagree strongly. We should bid now, and when we have the short diamonds, this could easily be passed out. Opener has no reason to bid again, and if partner has 4/5 diamonds, he doesn't either.

And I was also interested to see how you apply the possessive to your nom.