maggieb

Ridiculous is not the same as incorrect. I would be sad if all my mistakes turned out to be ridiculous. (Cause I've made more than my share of them! ;) :) )

How is this different from standard?

Fine in theory, would never play this in practice. The gains here are (clearly, in my opinion) not enough to justify it.

You should have a way to show a strong hand with both minors in this kind of auction. There are many possible solutions to this, the most intuitive is to play 3m is forcing (which is much better than having to bid 3M) and 3M is a GF minor two-suiter. Unfortunately this leaves you with no way to sign off in 3m, but there is no reasonable way to be able to show the strong hands while playing 3m = weak.

I dislike 1♠. I think it is bad bridge to bid suits like this when you know you are going to force to game. Starting with 2♣ leads to a more flexible auction, doesn't lose spades (I play 1♥, 2♠ does not promise extras in a GF auction), and doesn't cause partner to misevaluate his spade holdings while keeping all strains open. The only downside is that I will have to bid 2NT after I bid 2♣, but this seems like a much smaller misdescription.

Haha, thanks Josh! I see two others are also celebrating their birthday today, happy birthday to them! :) :) Mark and I are visiting my sister on the westcoast and it isn't officially my birthday yet. You are actually the first to congratulate me Josh! :)

That calculation assumes that you always get to game on the hands where you have 10+ tricks and always stop in 3 with the hands where you have at most 9 tricks. So the odds are actually larger than 816 vs 550. (adding... getting old! :) :)) Of course Arend's calculation is enough to see that inviting (at these odds) can't win. I'm not sure I trust double dummy results in such a contract though.

That is very funny, hahahaha.

Never mind. :P

Come on, is it really that hard to play with a woman for a few hours? :)

How wonderful to have a world life master posting on the forums Fluffy! I haven't seen you post much but I will read your contributions with great interest from now on! Congratulations from my husband and me! :)

Congratulations on coming up with a good idea for a new forum Josh! :)

As I said before, I agree with those that just bid their suits in their natural order. That's how I've been bidding my hands for almost 35 years and I'm happy doing so. I think my partners wouldn't know what to expect from me if I suddenly started bidding 3-card suits when I have a perfectly normal 5-card suit to bid. Of course, if I had AQx xxxxx Ax Kxx then I would bid 2C as I'm sure everybody here would, so I don't understand the objection to bidding 2C on king-third. And probably even HARLUK's book would tell you to bid 2C on AQx xxxx Axx Kxx. But that doesn't mean we should go out of our way to bid 2C on a 3-card suit, we don't open 1C with AQx Axxxx xx Kxx either do we? :D As for winstonm: Then why not stay in the watercooler? :) :P :P

1) The "we don't play forcing passes" cool crowd will be quick to say no, but I think there is substantial merit to playing this pass is forcing. That said, it is NF without a specific agreement. 2) Pass, who knows what's going on. 3a) Pass of course. 3b) Run, I think this is very clear!!! Unless my RHO is a beginner or is playing a very deep game, I know what he has: lots of black cards, with any black finesse onside if needed. Should he have redoubled with this hand? Maybe not, but in my experience, the redoubler always has a running suit and a big trump fit in this kind of situation.

White against red at IMPs, south deals. ♠AJxxx ♥A ♦A9xx ♣Jxx ♠- ♥KTxx ♦QJTxx ♣ATxx With the opponents silent the auction went: 1D 1S 2C 2H (fourth suit forcing to game) 3H 4D 4H 4S 5C 6D As the cards lie 6D can be made but south went down one. Are there one or more bids that you strongly disagree with?

2D Goodness, with 6-4 distribution in third seat you will need to come up with something better than unfavorable vulnerability to stop me from preempting! ;) :P

Well I can't say I agree with you here Josh. Yes, the hand has 8 top tricks but I still need a little bit from partner to make game and opening 2NT is unlikely to miss a game. On the other hand a 2C opening can easily get you to a slam where you just end up with too few goodies to make 12 tricks. So I'd also open 2NT. 1C worked really well this time (and yes, of course we'd bid 2H, this is the advanced/expert forum?) but I think it will more often create problems.

How about a new forum to discuss forum names! ;) :P B)

Hahaha, I really had to laugh reading this thread! :D

Don't let him get to you cherdano, there are people out there who are not as comfortable with statistics and who really appreciate your careful comments!

I'm relatively new to the forums but I like it a ton! Many good problems and interesting views (some a little too radical for my taste!). A separate forum for rulings seems like a good idea, but sometimes you want to post a ruling question without telling that it is a ruling question!

I do. Partner had the right idea but you would have bid 2S over 2D anyway if you were 3-6 in the blacks. The choice was between a 9-card club fit or at most a 7-card spade fit, doesn't seem too hard!

Any spade raise is a beginner's bid. I understand 3C but I don't think that you can make a sensible decision later anyway, so I would bid 5C immediately. Edit: what Han said.

I see I already posted 4H is best, I still think so!

I grew up playing rubber bridge at my parent's bridge parties. It sounds silly but the most common mistake that duplicate bridge players make when they play rubber bridge for the first time, is that they forget the partscores! They'll bid 1NT-3NT when they have a partscore of 60! Trust me, it happens all the time. Logically, a constructive bid above gamelevel (which can be as low as the 2-level) must be a slam try, though of course you should still be able to preempt. In general I'd say that rubber bridge strategy is not so different from IMPs. Bid your games aggressively but don't go overboard. If you can get a large penalty, go for it! Don't go out of your way to sacrifice over their partscore when they already have a score above the line. Keep in mind that even when it works out reasonably, you will still be in a dangerous position on the next hand. Being vulnerable when the opponents have a partscore is an especially dangerous position (or look at it the other way around: when you are playing against inexperienced players, you can make a lot of money in this position!). The bottom line is that rubber bridge is a wonderful game with new factors that complicate it, but in the end I still prefer to play duplicate.