wank

I can't see any reason not to bid 2n. There is a game bonus available.

double obviously

don't pay too much attention to the article. i'm british and i've never heard of the author, which suggests he doesn't play national or even county events. some of the other newspaper columns are written by people i do know and who are clueless. the same applies to bridge books aimed at beginners. being a good writer and a good bridge player are not very closely correlated. there is a good argument for playing it as forcing - it would free up a 2S rebid for something artifical, for example a strong raise. of course he makes no mention of this advantage. anyway the normal meaning is definitely non-forcing. the example hand one wouldn't want to jump to start a game force with anyway as it's not strong enough. that the author chose a poor example hand is a clue to the validity of the rest of the piece. it's very rare that one would really want to pass here anyway. either responder has 6 cards in his suit so will rebid those, he has 3+ of opener's first suit so he go back there and play an 8+ card fit or he has length in the 4th suit in which case he's happy bidding no trumps. *note for those who object to "he has 3+ of opener's first suit so he go back there and play an 8+ card fit": this style is pretty much universal in the UK.

Well that's obviously untrue. You can agree that opening 7nt shows 4333 15 count. Lo and behold you pick up a 4333 15 count. You open 7nt and go for 2300. "Oh no, i'm not an idiot, it was systemic," isn't a good defense.

noone plays 4d as natural

2s is a horrible bid, but you can bid whatever you like. if you bid 2s and got a good result, you're lucky but you've done nothing wrong.

1s by south would be gross.

of course 4s is to play over 4d. opener hasn't even promised real diamonds.

4nt by opener can't be rkcb as responder hasn't shown slam values. it should be spades well stopped, all the controls and sufficient keycards and a diamond fit imo.

You have the spades stacked. Just make the normal club lead. If you have 2 heart tricks you'll probably still have 2 heart tricks after t1.

are you not playing smith? i don't play udca, but i would think you should smith to show a doubleton on a strong lead with 3 cards in dummy once you've shown 2 or 4 (or 1) as 4 isn't a possibility on this hand. a non-smith would indicate a singleton then in which case it seems declarer is 3451. as i said i don't play udca, so i'm used to partner playing his lowest (1 or 3) then smithing to show 3, so this is possibly bollocks. this is after all an usual effect on this hand (getting the club count inferentially), but more usually you would need to differentiate 1 from 2 if you had led off a 6 card suit.

that's a 2c opener. partner won't have that.

it's false preference in exactly the same way as you bid 1s-1nt-2d-2s with 2s and 4d an an 8 count. you don't know you belong in diamonds. if you bid 4d you can't play 3nt and it should show more or better diamonds. you can't bid 3n with pony hearts. 3s is the only sensible option left unless you want to pass 3d, which is what i would actually do and earn the ire of the partnership trust brigade.

only idiots would double. you don't jump in the passout seat as a pre-empt do you?

north doesn't have a double. wouldn't he be far happier defending 2h than playing 2s or 2nt?

not to say that 5c was wrong on this hand, but in general don't worry about your 4 level pre-empts letting them play game. pre-empting is about disrupting the opponents. they will assuredly be disrupted by a 4 level pre-empt - due to the lack of space they might stop in game when they have slam (very common because they won't want to voluntarily go past the safety of the 4 level to investigate slam and go down in 5), play the wrong fit, or play a good contract that goes down on bad splits (if you have 9 clubs partner will often have a very shapely hand that stops them making what ostensibly looks like a decent contract). anyway pre-empting is not the same thing as sacrificing, i.e. wanting to play the hand yourself (doubled presumably) because it's cheaper than letting the opponents play and make their contract.

i didn't know the hand until i saw this and read up about it. i went for the ace of diamonds, 'knowing' declarer had a club void, and hoping declarer has some kind of diamond fit and i could give partner a ruff. i can understand getting tunnel vision and not processing that dummy's only got 2 clubs, but i don't claim to have the concentration skills necessary to be in one of the best pairs in the world.

yes but there's a right way to phrase the question and a wrong way. if you ask about the whole auction or the 5H bid in general terms and get a half answer then you can ask a follow up. if you ask specifically about the queen without reference to anything else it's pokeresque.

you seem to have some funny ideas. opps can ask questions. they aren't supposed to be deliberately deceptive, for example asking about a 5H response to RKCB, "does that deny the queen of trumps?" when looking at it, but aside from that they can ask any relevant questions whenever they like. they risk giving their partner UI if there's a pattern to those questions, but giving UI isn't illegal either.

all natural. well, 3s showing spade concentration rather than length - responder seems very unlikely to have spades . of course some people play some sort of artificial rebid over 2nt (personally i normally play natural because i don't bother to agree anything else. i certainly wouldn't want to play checkback though) but OP didn't mention anything.

1c-1d-2nt-3c-3s-3nt in normal methods

FYP. no reason to think partner has a sensible shape to double given we've got a singleton heart.

bidding here has always worked out badly for me too.

honours are meant for killing opps' honours. if you throw your king under declarer's ace (except at expert levels of play we assume partner won't underlead an ace against a suit*) it can't be used to kill dummy's jack. the jack will therefore be a trick for declarer (by leading towards it through partner's queen or by right if declarer has ace and queen). *bad players sometimes underlead aces against suits but they're doing it for totally the wrong reasons.

3 upvotes for this? is rho supposed to come in at the 4 level vul on a 6 card suit? that's not to say that lho would likely have a bid with a 6 card suit either considering there's only 17 queen rich points to distribute.