SlickRicky

Hi, I think anything but 1H is crazy. Ricky

Hi, I almost always transfer to the 6 card minor. I would not on hands like Qx Qx Qxx xxxxxx or other such contrived hands, but it would be quite rare for me. Ricky

Hi, I think that 4 is the most common number, but that 3 is more likely than 5. I would guess 3.75 on that basis. Ricky

Hi Ken, I pass happily! Ricky

Hi Ken, It's tempting to bid 4D or 5D with a hand like this, but I will go with a pedestrian 4C bid. If partner signs off we won't have a slam. Ricky

Hi, In my opinion 2S and 2N are NF, and 3 level bids are forcing. This is also consistent with new minor forcing, where 2 level bids by responder are NF (not that it need be consistent, just that the same logic applies). Ricky

Hi Roger, This seems like an easy pass. Even if 7H is cold, you will do fine being in 7C. Ricky

Hi Ken, I would bid 2N showing extra values and a diamond stopper with minimum shape. Ricky

Hi, This is a clear double, game is still in play opposite the right weak NT hand type or we could compete for the partscore. Additionally since we're a PH partner cannot get carried away. Ricky

Hi Roland, I disagree, I think it is common (at least in my area) to play this as a splinter for hearts. Of course partner will generally take you for 3 hearts rather than four since you made a delayed splinter, so you can't have everything. I had even thought this was "expert standard" but I guess not. I also think it is superior from a theoretical standpoint to play this as a splinter for hearts rather than clubs; it will be rare to have short diamonds and a club 1 suiter given that you have at most 2 hearts. Shapes like 3217 are possible but rare compared to 4315, 3316, some 3415s, etc. It also seems more likely to be useful information that you have a stiff diamond when you are the short trump hand, and you are more likely to want to be the captain of the auction when you have 7+ clubs. This is not to say that a splinter for clubs would be useless, I just think it would be less useful and less frequent. Ricky

Hi, I think that avoiding a bad grand opposite xxx clubs and getting partner to correctly evaluate the CQ and know about a source of tricks are both important features to this hand, so I will start with 2C. Ricky

Hi Mike, Obviously I just mistyped, and meant play a spade to the jack then pull the last trump rather than pull trump and lead a spade to the jack. I would hope a player of your caliber could see that I just reversed a trick, and would not disregard the whole line of play because of it! :) Ricky Well, given that in my post I made precisely the type of error that I accused you of, it seems to me that you are mistaken in your reference to 'a player of your calibre' :) I suggested winning the trump in dummy and crossing to my K in case I found trump to be 4-1. I then pressed enter and went to lunch.. as I was hitting the elevator button, I realized that if trump were 4-1, my line was hopeless: no diamond miracle is enough. And in fact the error that you made in your post and that I made in mine is precisely the type of error that can be made by a wide range of players, even experts such as I like to think I am, if not focussed... failing to project far enough ahead... in my defence, my error was dealing with a side issue, since I was pretty certain that trump were not 4-1. I could have drawn trump, crossed in diamonds to play spades, but that risks a diamond back, which might complicate matters prematurely, so I stay with my plan. Hi Mike, Indeed your line and my line 2 were the exact same in spirit (except that we both mistyped, but no doubt had the same [good] line in mind), except that you remembered to cash a top diamond first which is a stronger play! Ricky

Hi Phil, Your math is off by quite a bit. I think you can see this if you think of it like this: You go down with both spade honors offside which is 25 %. So if your line is 74 %, you are making almost every single time that both spade honors are offside. Obviously this is not the case as you also are losing to Hx or stiff H on right and DQ on left. That is about an additional 7.5 % of the time, which makes your line 66.5 % However, if you agree with me that LHO is likely to lead from KQ of spades at least some of the time, then the percentage of success for that line becomes even lower. That being said, my suggested line 1 has at least that good of a chance even if they pitch perfectly (more than the 64 % that dburn stated because you can pick up 5-1 or 6-0 diamonds onside so long as LHO has 1 spade honor also, making it about 69 %). If you add in the significant chance of a mispitch, I think that it is clearly the right line Ricky

Hi Mike, Obviously I just mistyped, and meant play a spade to the jack then pull the last trump rather than pull trump and lead a spade to the jack. I would hope a player of your caliber could see that I just reversed a trick, and would not disregard the whole line of play because of it! :) Ricky

Hi Phil, Is it common to play WJS by passed hands? Is this what you play in your partnerships? Ricky