Jlall

I always take 2nd seat vul to mean red/white, perhaps this is a non standard interpretation?

yep

Usually I am all for overcalling at the 1 level. However, bidding red/white with this hand seems pointless to me. Generally you bid 1S in hopes that you can find a game, or find a save, or compete for the partial, or get a lead in, or just to be a nuisance to them. I think being a nuisance to them red/white is unlikely to be a good idea with terrible hands. Finding a save r/w is not a consideration. When we are this weak, finding a game shouldn't be a consideration; we'll find it if we pass. Even if it's our hand to compete for the partial, probably partner will get us in there since our hand is so weak. If we overcall, he might well get us too high on those deals. We don't really need a spade lead. Basically, I think bidding with this hand red/white is pointless, and not because partner might start cracking them. It is a definite possibility partner will overbid though, I would never blame him for game forcing a misfitting 17 or possibly 16. And there is significant risk that he will bid a different suit hoping to compete or whatever, and we just get doubled. It is just a bad idea to bid r/w with complete garbage imo, the usual reasons do not apply, AND the risk is much higher.

Hey Helene, If you always overcall 2S in weak fields, you will definitely get good results. But if you always passed in weak fields, you would also get good results. So it might be hard to say that 2S>p even if 2S isn't that dangerous, because you don't really know how much you've gained. That said, I'm a big believer in preempting aggressively against bad opps, since most of them know what to do in constructive auctions most of the time (except slam bidding), but have poor judgement. At imps, it seems like there isn't a huge amount of upside towards preempting here. You're unlikely to steal or talk them out of a game, and even if you happen to steal on their hand, if you go -200 or -300 you haven't gained much vs a white game. If there is not much upside and not much downside, consider that you are hurting your bidding a lot when you have a real 2S bid. Partner will make less accurate decisions since you have a wider range, so it'd be better to keep a narrower range if the hands you add into the 2S bid aren't benefiting you very much. At matchpoints there is a lot more upside to preempting, but there is a lot more downside, you could just go for 200 on a partscore hand which is terrible.

Sure I agree, I more meant would you bid over any of 1C/1D/1H/1N? Basically I meant in practice does it change your decision or not. For me on this hand it is not (remotely) close enough in my judgement for it to matter to me what they opened. That being said on close decisions, I might decide based on those factors.

6C

I'm with you mike, 3H on the 2nd one. If it goes p 3N I will be very sad :rolleyes:

I think this is an overbid. I have a hard time believing you like a suit that has just the king in terms of the top 4 honors. I agree it's not the worst, the T98 are nice and not having A empty is nice, but 1 of the top 4 is still a big hole. QJT8xx or KQTxx or KQJxxx etc are still infinitely better. Surely this is at best a borderline suit for a r/w preempt. Then you add to that that our shortness is clubs and not spades (a big difference in how often we need to preempt, and also how often our preempt keeps us out of a suit we need to be in ♠), and that we have both an ace and a void on the side which increases both our defense and our playability in other suits, and I just think it's a sucky hand to preempt. That said, I know how jdonn !Hs his 6-4 and T98 :rolleyes:

Yeah the way I play it though usually you show your 1 suiter, and then partner might say he dislikes his hand or answer keycard or whatever, and maybe no one has bid the suit yet, then maybe you jump to 5N to get him to bid the suit, but by then you've given some info away about openers hand (how many keycards he has), and you've probably already made an artificial bid or two by now that could be doubled anyways. For instance: 2N 3S 3N 4D To me this shows a 1 suited slam try in clubs. Note I've made 2 artificial bids. Now opener can answer keycards in clubs, or reject clubs. So maybe he bids 4S or w/e. Now I bid 5N saying bid 6C and he does. In this auction I made 2 artificial bids that can be doubled, and opener has said he likes clubs and how many keycards he has. Obviously this is worse than 2N 6C but now we've wrongsided. So for me 2N 5H 5S 5N 6C is much better, opener has said nothing about his hand, and I've only made 1 bid that could be doubled. Maybe my methods over 2N just suck for this though.

Heh, I don't think we actually disagree on this subject. I was simply offering more reasons and often the biggest reason that people don't perform well. Obviously I believe you can do things to increase how well you play on average and also decrease your variance, such as sleeping/excersizing/whatever floats your boat. I do think that if someone slept 6 hours instead of their normal 8 and had a bad session, it's more likely due to natural variance than the missing 2 hours of sleep, and they're likely to attribute too much blame to the missing 2 hours of sleep. That being said, it's clearly better to get 8 hours of sleep than 6 if thats what you need. Obv if you take some extreme and you got 0 hours of sleep or someone close to you died or something there is no chance you're gonna play well though.

I think for a lot of people, they make most of their mistakes playing too fast. Maybe I am projecting though :rolleyes: I always think of mistakes at least in cardplay in 2 categories: 1) They were too hard or complicated for your level of play, so you couldn't reasonably be expected to get it right (this could mean anything depending on where you're at in your bridge life). 2) They were not too hard, and you said after the hand "Obv I should have played a spade, here is why." #2 mistakes should be eliminated, and we must assume that the person just didn't think it through long enough before making their error, since they were capable of getting it right. This could be just a lack of concentration or w/e, but generally it means you played too fast and didn't think the position through long enough. One simple way to try to avoid this happening is asking yourself before you play any card "why am I playing this card?" If you have no reason, think through it a little bit more.

I currently have no meaning assigned to 2N-5H. I think I'm gonna start playing it as a transfer to 6 of a minor (5S asks then 5N clubs, 6C diamonds), so that you aren't forced to investigate/help them totally with their lead, but you can always transfer and bid 6 of a minor. Of course this helps them with lead directing Xs and stuff, but it's still better than having to bid 2N-6m and wrongside imo.

Love the opening pass, this is not a 2H opener to me. It's a complicated hand after 1S, it is so likely you belong in hearts (3 small trumps makes your void pretty meh, and your heart suit often won't come into play if the DA gets knocked out blah blah), but you don't really wanna suppress your support. I'd have probably bid 2H and hoped I could bid 3S next, but I definitely don't fault 2D. Now I'm gonna bid 3H and consider that pretty much automatic. For starters partner might still be 5314 pretty easily and then he'll bid 4H, and secondly I don't see how 3H can cause a misevaluation. If partner has a stiff heart he'll know it's bad, if he has Hx he'll upgrade his hand, etc etc.

Playing 5C at MP seems like aiming at a very very small target. I would love to get to bid 5N transfer to 6C or something lol. It is probably very important that partner declares. In my current methods (which I don't like) I'd have to bid 3S forcing 3N then 4D showing clubs.

Agree, except with the part about being sound heh. I'd probably pass with 3 and bid with 2.

Yeah, I think my takeout doubles are about an ace stronger than yours. But no, I did not pass this one: I bid 4♠. It might have been a bit much. w/w with 2 queens I think this is just too much, but I'm happy to see you bidding ♥

I think most people have a jump cue (3H) available in this auction for mixed so 3S can be weak

Would never consider anything other than 3S. If you were to ask me to write a textbook example of a 3S bid this would be it!

Does it affect your decision or are you just curious? (just wondering if you would overcall over 1C but not 1H or something).

I definitely would not

Also, all of the things listed in the poll are either mental or physical weaknesses. As far as the mental weaknesses go, if those kind of things are going to affect you, that is a weakness you have as a bridge player. There is probably x (high) % chance that you are going to be distracted by something going on in your life, and y % chance of that being something that hurts your game in a big way. Part of the reason the best players are better and more consistent than worse players is because they arent going to be distracted by stuff like that, and thus are going to eliminate that element of variance. The ability to focus despite what is going on in your life is as important of a skill as a bridge player as knowing suit combinations or whatever. Some of them are physical things that obviously you can improve on (don't eat too much or too little, don't be dehydrated, build your stamina).

Obv there are things you can do to prepare yourself, and things you can do to maximize your chances of playing well. Obviously if you are tired to the point where you can't think, then you are going to play badly. I think it is less obvious that there is generally only so much you can do, and sometimes you're going to play badly. Even if you get a perfect amount of rest, and eat the perfect amount, and do every little thing right, all you have done is increase the average skill level that you'll play at, and possibly decrease the variance. But variance will still exist, and you will still play at the lower end of the spectrum sometimes. I think people do not put enough weight in this. Obviously if you can analyze your game perfectly, you will know exactly when you did something like Mbodell said (taking a 60 % line instead of an 80 % line) and even if it doesn't cost you will give yourself a charge and feel that you played badly, and you know exactly the average # of decisions you'll have, and will adjust how well you think you played according to that, and you will be a completely rational human being... Or maybe not. Sorry but I think a lot of people make more mistakes than they realize and only charge themselves when they cost, or at least only realize it was a mistake because it cost. But that is a seperate issue. See, which mistakes would be characteristic in your opinion? Almost all mistakes made at the top level are mistakes that could have been avoided. That being said, there are ALWAYS mistakes at the top level. I do not think "wow that particular mistake was uncharacteristic," I would think "wow given his skill level if he made 2 bad mistakes in 64 boards, that's approximately what he rates to do." Look at it this way. Say there was a player who was 10 % to make a mistake on any given board. This is constant. Let's say he played 10 boards. If he made 0 mistakes, did he play great? What if he made 1? What about 2? The reality is, he played his normal game, and was always 10 % to make a mistake. Whether he made 0, 1, 2, or 3 will determine whether he thinks he played well or not. If he made 3, he might think back on something that happened, and blame that "I was tired." But in reality, he played the same game he always plays, it was just variance. I have no weak areas and always play perfectly obv. I am not trying to say there aren't things you can do to increase your chances of playing well. I AM trying to say that no matter what you do, you're still going to make some mistakes, and that people do not consider the variance/luck in how often they blunder nearly enough. Most likely we all play our worst when we are in our worst conditions (hungry, tired, depressed, hungover) and then we run badly on top of it

How about this... Let's say on average you play as well as a 7.5 (where 10 is meckstroth, 1 is someone who is playing their first session). Everyone has variance in how well they play, for the top players a standard deviation would be very small (part of being a top player is playing consistently well). For non top players, a standard deviation will be higher. So let's say you play on average like a 7.5, with a standard deviation of .7. When you play like a 6.5, you will feel you've played horribly (and this is quite poor for you but happens every now and then). When you play like a 9 you will think you played great (and this is quite well for you, but happens every now and then). So when you play like a 6.5 you will think of all the reasons this could happen, for instance you didn't sleep well, or something is happening in your life. Of course stuff is always happening in your life that could contribute negatively to your play. Maybe it was just one of your off days, and despite many possible reasons for it happening, it is just going to happen based on your skill level, and there's no specific reason. Alternatively, let's say there are certain areas in bridge where you are very good, and certain areas where you aren't, which is also natural especially if you're not a top player. Maybe many boards than usual came up in your weak areas, which caused you to make more mistakes. In reality you will often mess up those boards based on your skill level, or at least have a 50 % chance of making errors on those type of boards, rather than a 10 % chance on a different hand type which would be very hard for others. So, because you ran bad on those things coming up, you feel you made more mistakes than you usually make and search for reasons why you might have played badly (and again, humans are good at finding patterns and reasons where none exists). So maybe my answer is I usually play my worst bridge because I have natural variance based on my skill level, and when I hit the bottom end of that I am playing my worst bridge.

Haha when I saw the title of this thread I was wondering if anyone would say "hungover."

If we are so weak that partner can't bid 4H over 3H (which shows a strong hand), or that we have nowhere to pitch our hearts, maybe the opponents can make something. But yeah 2H seems better than 3H if you're not gonna bid 4.