wank

funny, i would never think of passing 2s. anyway, i wouldn't say a slow 2S demonstrably suggested much at all.

sto?

[hv=pc=n&n=saha5dak976542c86&d=e&v=b&b=10&a=2h2s3h4dp4s5c]133|200[/hv] matchpoints your go? if you don't agree with 4♦, say what you would have done instead.

your partner could do nothing. you must cuebid with your hand. add your 8 points to partner's 23ish+ and you know you're in the slam zone so you should announce some strength with a cue instead of endplaying partner. as for what 3nt should mean, you could play cues as 1st round controls (the GFer will often have a shapely hand where aces are much more valuable than kings) and 3nt as values but not aces, i.e. what you have.

the glaring hole is that you'll be dead by the time you get dealt a hand to use it profitably.

obviously north is having a laugh and anyone who believes him should take a look at the bridge in london i'm selling.

Assuming you're playing weak NT and opening all 5m422 hands in range with 1NT, what should you do on your rebid with 5431s with 3 card support? playing strong NT it's normal to raise on 3 if minimum, showing roughly the same strength as a weak NT. playing weak NT the rebid raise, e.g. 1c-1H-2H is normally an unbalanced minimum or a lower end strong NT. it seems to me that a 3 card minimum is too weak in playing strength compared to the others to make a sensible range. should the method of bidding these be inverted then from strong NT methods such that you take the indirect raising route on these hands, e.g. 1c-1h-1s-2c-2h? you would just raise immediately on the stronger hands with this shape, which are roughly equal imo to a strong NT in playing strength, i.e. a 15 count with a singleton and 3 trumps is roughly equal to a 15 count with 4 trumps and no singletons. i never heard this before, despite playing in the land of the weak NT. here everyone still plays the indirect raise as showing extras.

6D - it needs to be something dramatic to stop partner bidding hearts again.

it's still legal to play in 4M after showing your 7 card suit

i would never open this filth, even if it had been non-vul, but if you want to, open 1D hoping to attract the lead then retire.

imo partner's got a nice t/o shape and a paucity of points. when the opps parked the bus in 2S, he knew you had enough for him to risk an action. so no i wouldn't be tempted to double. most people, gnasher included apparently, would never double on partner's hand, so we're already ahead of the game.

2dXX +1 = 760 2DXX + 2 = 960 it seems a little churlish not to have explored this possibility whilst looking at qjx of diamonds and knowing to at least 30 HCP between the 2 hands. it's a rather safer way to make one's money than trying for 6nt. if the doubler really had anything scary - Akxxxxx or some such - he'd most likely have found something to do over 1NT, whatever his methods.

errors in bidding are just more visible than errors in play. that's why you think it's where you're leaking all your points. consider a 2-way finesse. you take it the wrong way and go off and just shrug your shoulders and say you were unlucky. a better declarer might well have spotted more clues to get it right, or else found a line which didn't require a finesse at all.

don't forget east will see the diamond is the jack at t1. declarer would take the opportunity to ruff a diamond surely if he had the hand you gave him. considering the lack of a heart lead AQ over must be a reasonable possibility in which case declarer is going to have difficulty guessing them correctly, despite a read on east. you can't tempo east out of the hand at t2 either - he gets a free tank at t1 to consider his t2 play.

i don't think 8-3 is so odd. he could probably hazard a guess that 2h wasn't going to be passed out so bid it on the way to 4s lest partner need to judge over 5m. of course this would have its downsides, most obviously that the opps might bid 5m before you got the chance to bid spades.

people leading a small heart off dummy at any point are evidently used to playing against morons. playing to escape losing to the A of H is just abrogating the Queens issue. man up and make a decision.

playing fast arrival in no-trumps is stupid. jumps = extras. minimum NT bid = minimum or big extras (will bid on past 3nt) clasically minimum = 12-14 extras = 15-17 big extras = 18+

the other option would be to open 1nt in the first place. i can't imagine actually exercising this option playing weak NT though. however, if i had 1444 16 count with a singleton spade honour playing a strong NT, i suspect it would be my choice.

partner must have an outside card for a 2nd in hand red pre-empt so you'll make 3nt unless the clubs are open. depending what 2nt is you could look for features and play 5d if it's spades. the trouble of doing that of course is that you offer them the option of Xing partner's potential 3C bid and if partner bids hearts you put them off that lead. bidding 3d is crazy. you know your side's got around 25 points. why would you expect the opps to bid at the 3 level?

that makes 0 sense. you're putting all your money on the Q of S instead. if you want to make a better case for rising with the ace, it offers a modest combination of chances option - the trump finesse or ruffing out the Q of D and getting 2 quick pitches if trumps are 3-2. i would say this is not likely enough to upset me if i thought there was a particular reason to play for 1 queen or the other. as it happens, i would always bet on the Q of D being with the leader - something like 70-80% (i'm clueless at bridge maths) at a guess. people like leading from honours versus slams in hopes of building a trick and if he didn't have the queen he could have chosen some similar filth from which to lead, definitely in clubs and most likely in hearts, a la PoRC.

i presume helen plays 3c as a weak pass/correct and 2nt as being interested. perforce if the cuebidder has above minimum he's expected to do more than bid 3m - maybe something like 3S = 6 spades, 3NT = diamonds, 3H = clubs. it all rather depends how strong you play the cuebid. in my experience beginners tend to bid it on very bad hands, whereas stronger players tend to have something resembling an opening bid with most suit combinations and vulnerabilities.

at this vul i'm happy to go for my best chance of a plus score which is pass.

1 is fine. you're at green. 3 is conservative - with a passed partner and this many tricks i'd be happy to bid 4. 2 and 4 are mad. far farfar too playable in the other suit. you could go down in partscore with slam gin.

no, it's a terrible agreement. it highlights for the opps what to lead. everyone is now going to underlead the ace of H and put you to a guess for 6. if you want something slightly more sensible, and equally unlikely to be anyone's actual agreement, 5D should ask for first round controls up the line with a reask if opener shows one lower than spades.

in 25 years of playing bridge in england i've never seen that once.