wank

what?

only beginners would think south has to pass 4d here. north's bid can't possibly be to play after rebidding 2NT. in all likelihood south should indeed take it as some sort of superaccept. depending how good his hand is, he may or not be allowed to bid 4H. it might be appropriate to force him to make a counter-cuebid or even 4NT if his hand is good opposite a superaccept. you would then have to judge where the bidding might end up and award an adjusted score - something like 7 hearts -2 for example as north would also blissfully continue on the assumption south had diamonds making it hard for them to stop in a vaguely sensible spot. it's not about restoring equity in any normal sense of the word. you can consider it to be restoring equity to the point where south bid 4h (the call affected by the UI). at this point 'equity' could very well be 100% for EW as NS might have no legal way out of their pickle.

i have a feeling i've been given this hand before. i bid then and i bid now.

if you want to start playing 5 card majors, play 2/1. if you want to play something better than acol with a weak NT, but more familiar than 2/1, try 4cM with a strong or even better 14-16 NT. This way you open 1M a lot with weak hands with 4M which is quite pre-emptive. btw playing this was is a good introduction to 2/1, because with the balanced hands too strong for 1NT you should effectively play 5cM and 2/1s should be pretty strong.

well yes splintering in a singleton ace isn't ideal, but nor is anything else on this hand. 4d is best of a bad job imo.

either treat it as a 2-suiter and pass then micheals, or treat it as a 1 suiter by opening a lot of spades (3 or 4 depending on your aggression). the former action would be the safer, descriptive route, whereas the latter would be the aggressive, more variance producing route. fwiw, make my spades better (kjt) and i'd bid 4s, but with the dodgy suit i'll pass and show a 2-suiter. really hate 2s. your hand is too good for only 1 call, but bidding again is likely to involve having to act at the 4 level.

reopening is poor. this isn't a great hand (kx under the bid) and partner couldn't act himself. those hoping for partner to float it are too optimistic. partner's not got a trump stack when you have kx against an unfavourable 2 level overcall in a minor. it's more likely we'll protect the opps into something good than do the same for ourselves. they could easily be making game in hearts - lho could be 64 or rho could have a heart suit without enough to advance. as for 3C, that would be woefully bad.

a/q for attitude, king for count has nothing to do with the OP. The OP is about leader showing length with his choice of card. A/Q att, K ct is about extracting your preferred signal from partner. by the way, the reason A for count doesn't work is that you want a power lead for situations when you want partner to unblock against NT. For example you hold AKJTx against 3NT and dummy puts down xxx. Attitude is no good because you won't know if declarer's queen is dropping. Similarly count is no good because you don't know where the queen is. You need to have the agreement that a card is strong enough for partner to unblock honours and otherwise give count. Only the king works for this, as you can hold other strong holdings like KQt9x. as it happens i prefer rusinow with king for power though.

against the 4-4 variant you want a take out double so you can find your spade fit. not being able to play 4s because someone has jxxx is too weak.

2h. i don't care about the spade void when i've got 7 likely tricks.

lol at the passers. you must get more 8-5 hands than i do. i'm not letting the opps play this one until i run out of bids or partner applies a red card.

rhe first reply you received assumed you were playing some sort of 5 card major system and strong NT. best to state you're playing acol, presumably with a weak NT, in the original post. everyone will assume you're playing standard american or 2/1 game force if you don't specify it. in case you haven't realised yet, acol is very much a minority system globally, despite its near 100% use in places like UK. no i wouldn't bid 2c playing acol - if partner raises clubs you'll be in trouble (you will either have to guess 3NT which is an overbid and runs the risk of missing a much better 4H contract or you can bid 3H which risks end playing partner if he's only got 4 hearts). best to bid 2d then at least you can survive a raise.

no

to the people worried about defending 6, you do see you've got 4 diamonds, right? the chances of the opps bidding 6 are somewhere in the region of 0. as to what to bid, I double and lead spades. i expect this to get forced off. who knows how many tricks we can make in spades? partner's 3rd in, we shouldn't be expecting a very pure hand.

it can all go terribly wrong but you have to suck it up and bid 2h imo, otherwise there's a distinct danger of clocking up an embarrassing number of 50s when you're cold for game.

[hv=pc=n&s=s6hakq3d9872ct532&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=pp1np]133|200[/hv] the 'other' in the poll refers to what would you would do given the basic system in use. obviously i know there are plenty of conventional response schemes available which would have solved the problem. the 1NT is 15-17 [unsurprisingly, considering the context]. imps

basically i agree with your chum (except about 3s): failing to cue and denying a control are not the same thing imo. you have to be able to show a pile of crap at some point otherwise you'll get too high when you've got controls and no tricks. there's enough of a difference between 10 and 15 for this still to be necessary in a strong club system. i think this is a very difficult slam to bid though. neither player has enough to push on past 4 imo. once east did though, west has to bid slam.

stephen this is one of the reasons why the modern way is to respond 2c with most Gf hands without 5s or 5d, knowing that you can always find your spade fit after 2s-3s with serious/non-serious 3nt to differentiate strength. playing that style going through 4sf like this will have 5 spades. note if responder has a strong diamond raise playing a more traditional style, he can jump to 4d to set trumps forcing, so that shouldn't be one of the possibilities.

you bid 3s with that shape. if you have a 3541 type hand that was too strong to bid 2s over 1s you jump to 4s now. if you never raise on 3, your bidding style is too alien to me for me to offer a worthwhile answer and in my mind it's unworkable due to situations like this.

opener hasn't limited his hand by rebidding 2s - it's forcing.

you're very wrong. that's what 5 spades shows, over which with the ace west cuebids clubs. 5h shows a heart control and implies you need partner to hold some good cards outside.

why is west in such a hurry to rebid k9xxx? as it is, i would bid 4h on the east hand, expecting west to hold a 2c bid. btw congratulations on your promotion from n/b, though i'm a little late.

shouldn't be that tricky. once south forces to game, north knows its going to be played at the 7 level 99% of the time. 1c-1d-2s-3s-4c-4nt-5x-5q-5s-5nt-6d-7d-7nt. 5x = aces, 5q = trump q ask, 5s = no

both hands are passes. if you're both top of your range you occasionally miss a contract. sad story, crying profusely. of course you can be indisciplined and stretch but then you risk going overboard, as would happen here.

and that's the largest difference between nige1's 1st and 2nd ranking since 2008.