Jlall

Wouldn't you expect to defend 3H X if he has that? Not that that is necessarily a good thing, that's one reason I don't like double with a hand like this; I don't like the thought of partner passing.

That being said, Ken I think this thread should be an indicator that given that we know that: A ) Partner has made a ridiculous slam try or B ) Partner has bypassed his spade control to show his club void B must be more likely. I mean jdonn and mikeh are good players and they seem to think you can bypass a spade control on this auction. I still don't understand what would compel one to think that, but if they both think that then I think that it is much more likely that that is what has occurred than that partner has made a crazy slam try. If partner was you or me, then it would be 100 % that partner has made a crazy slam try rather than bypassed spades. Since partner is unknown, we must figure out which is more likely in general, and I'll go with B.

I agree with Ken, 5C must deny a spade control. The only reason we know that partner DOES have a spade control is that: 1) We have no spade control 2) Our trumps are very good This combination allows us to know that partner must have spades controlled, but if either condition was not met partner could easily have no spade control, and that's what his auction shows.

5C

Siegmund, a couple of things: One, as maggie said 8 tricks is a 6 imp loss for bidding game. If you recalculate the EV, it is significantly +EV to bid now. However, your sim is probably overestimating the strength of partners hands; it includes 5422 19 counts (with 5 of the black suit) which likely would jumpshift to the black suit. Also, I think all 4252 18 counts would bid 1 or 2 spades, and some 2254 18's would bid 2C or 3C (some would bid 2N also). Not sure how you would simulate this. Also, I think some 5332 19 counts would be too strong for a 2N rebid and would open 2N. So, that being said, I'm sure the EV of moving on is going down again. At the end of the day imo people underestimate declarer advantage. On top of everything that has been said already, I think part of "being lucky" is putting yourself in a position to do so. If you are playing a knockout match against a pair who is constantly making every auction competitive, putting you to the test in the card play whenever possible, falsecarding frequently, doubling aggressively, bidding game aggressively, etc etc, you are going to be under constant PRESSURE, and you are just going to make mistakes. IMO I am "lucky" that my opponents make more mistakes against me than others because I am constantly putting pressure on them. That is a great meta to have going on, and it is part of winning bridge. Maybe some things are -EV in a vaccuum if my opps are going to react perfectly to it, but you know what, no opps I've ever played have reacted perfectly to constant pressure. If they are going to go low on marginally +EV things, and not test me with things that should be neutral EV but give me an opportunity to err, etc, I have a huge advantage because I will be less tired and less fried by the end of the match. Sorry for that random rant, but I think it is an important part of bridge that is often overlooked, especially imp bridge. Here's another thing that is overlooked. If I am playing and you make some stop in 2N making 2, I am not really demoralized. Even if I am conciously aware that that is going to be six imps out, eh whatever, 6 imps, and I didn't really do anything wrong. Similarly, if I go down in a thin game, no big deal, that is how I play and that's how the chips fall. Six isn't that much. This is how people think. However, if they happen to misdefend and let a game make, or even if I bid some 30 % game and it makes, oh no, thats a BIG SWING, that is demoralizing, some people feel pressured to get it back...and here we go...they're in another game... etc. A lot of times you can blitz an opponent on thin game hands if they mess one of them up and are not tough as nails psychologically, they're going to make more mistakes, etc etc. These kind of things do not happen if you are just playing 2N. Again, there is no pressure. IMO there is a reason why playing Meckwell is just downright scary. There is just an overwhelming amount of pressure on you at all times, and they don't let up, EVER. If you look at the hands, it looks like they are in -EV contracts very often, so they should be losing to teams that are in +EV contracts, but that's just not what ends up happening. You have to play the match of your life to beat them. IMO it is a winning style to say to the opponents "Ok, if you play perfectly in the face of this blitz of fast competitive bidding and hyper aggressive game bidding, you will beat me. Go ahead and do it." All of this is just more reason to bid game on these hands and not worry about it. The people who simulate hands miss all of this and wind up in 2N more often than they should, not understanding why their opponents seem to play well against them so often.

Yeah I agree. It seems like if you want to take a shot without science you bid 1N-4N or 1N-4C rather than showing your heart shortness, 1N-3N is really conservative amongst other things. I am all for taking practical shots to avoid them making a good lead on us, but I would always just bid it straight and show my heart shortness and try to have an intelligent auction to the best spot. I think that using a combination of having superior methods than the field (can show heart shortness), and superior bidding judgment than the field (judging the slam decision well) is a great recipe for winning the board very often without having to resort to high variance tactics. I also don't feel like this hand is strong enough to warrant a blast, I really don't know if I want to be in slam or not.

Disagree that the fast HK means anything beyond just having the KQ of hearts. I mean it took a long time for the auction to happen, so they had time to think during that, but just looking at the auction it's obvious the opponents have good spades and good clubs, I would find it completely normal to lead from my KQ of hearts pretty much regardless of my hand. I thought this was a really interesting hand, nice analysis everyone thanks for the thoughts!

Yeah, I never alerted any of these scrambling 2N bids and one opp got mad at me and the director informed me that I had to alert it. Glad to see that he was correct, I have been alerting since that incident, but I think most people in the ACBL are not aware that it is technically an alert.

I'd pass, game is unlikely for both sides, clubs looks like a fine spot, and a 1D bid is unlikely to do much to destruct them, and we are vulnerable so going minus a few hundred for no reason would suck.

How would it change if you were playing a different system such that you could play 1nt? I realize it is a bit of a different problem but my partner and I would bid this hand 1♣-1♦-1nt with partner showing 18-19 balanced and us showing 0-7 or 8+ with at most 1 control. At this point we don't know about the suit usefulness. Red at IMPs would you pass, invite, or blast? And assuming you answer invite, if you had to choose pass 1nt or blast 3nt which would you pick? If I could I would invite to 2N, I would expect partner accept pretty aggressively (again, he is going from 2N to 3N, so he should be accepting usually) and if he passed with 18 and no 5 bagger or 17 and a 5 bagger I don't think we're missing game too often. If I had to pass 1N or bid 3N I would choose 3N.

This is true, but what maggie said often trumps this consideration.

Yay Sheri :P

Do whatever is consistent with your partnership style. I think if you don't play limited openers you are stretching it too wide to open this, but if your partnership likes to open light and accounts for that then by all means go for it.

With a spade void I would definitely bid 4H. With a doubleton spade I would just bid 3.

Not sure if I took this the right way but FWIW the last time I took a legit IQ test it was 156. There are obviously many people with higher IQs than me but I would say I am above the genius level lol. It is amusing to me that so many people think they know anything about me.

Ok, I also thought that just playing clubs and planning on hopefully reading the situation and probably playing a double squeeze with a diamond pivot was the right line. I also noted what xcurt said about how the opps should play a diamond when in with the CQ, especially RHO. LHO might have to play an H from Hxx to give me a guess. Balicki chose to ruff a diamond, and then played AK of clubs followed by spades which I thought was the right line after ruffing a diamond. On the actual hand LHO has 4333 with one diamond honor and the CQ and no HJ, so after ruffing a diamond, playing clubs would have worked. If you pound 3 rounds of clubs it is not clear what would happen but you COULD make it obviously.

Yes this was not the most polite way to say it. Obviously I meant it in the context of "have no chance to win the event." Many players are good and have no chance to win the blue ribbon pairs. My point is simply that a side open event is great for these people who want to play in a national, and want to have a chance to win. It is also great for the people in the blue ribbon who either have a chance to win, or simply want to try to compete with the best and see how they do, despite having no chance to win. I don't see how it is beneficial to ANYONE to force these players to play in the main event.

Sorry I had a thought, what are you going to do with 1 suited major suit hands that you would normally open 1M and rebid 3M with, but aren't 15+, like AKT9xxx AJx xx x. Are you just gonna open 2M and hope it works out, or are you going to upgrade to strong club? Possibly open some of them 4M if they're really light HCP wise? I foresee that hand type becoming a problem. Maybe this is why you made your 1C 15+ Also if you play this system in a practice match vs good opps lemme know how it goes, really curious to see how it works out cuz I'm pretty enthusiastic about your idea.

Looks good, I like it. I only saw one minor improvement I'd make to the structure immediately, I think 1S-2D should be hearts, inv (and 1S 3D natural), seems like that's a more important hand to get off your chest, plus the transfer style has some advantages when you're 2 suited obv or maybe 2-5 in the majors could bid like that then bid 2S. The most obvious weakness of your system imo is the 2C opener. In my experience with that 2C opener, it is just really hard to handle, and whatever you do may work poorly, even if you have a really nice system over it, since you're forced to guess immediately a lot of the time. This will no doubt be your worst opener, which is fine obviously, every system has a worst opener. Looks like you've gone the route of a forcing 2M response to this, so you're just going to end up in a lot of bad partials imo, and sometimes you will miss major suit games because you have to pass 2C but have a 5-4 major suit fit. I always thought that the 1N opener is just too wide of a range of shapes in Fantunes, so I also think that about your system. That said you will have a lot of gains from hiding your shape also because it's gonna be hard to defend 1N-3N type auctions, but again you might end in some stupid partials, and perhaps miss game when you have to pass 1N and partner is 5242 or whatever. Overall this is not nearly as big of a problem as your 2C opener to me though, but you know I'm a fan of opening 1N a lot lol. Obviously your 1M openers are just ridiculousssssly good, 1S especially. They are so well defined, and they are still gonna be quite frequent. Not sure if you'd like this, but imo you might open even lighter than suggested for 1M specifically, because it is just so good, and you'd like to increase the frequency a bit. At the very least upgrade a lot or something lol. Obviously when you up the frequency you lower the effectiveness, but I think it would still be quite effective. 1H might suffer SOMETIMES from being 4414 in competitive auctions, but whatever it's rare enough that it doesn't matter. I would really love to open 1M in your system. Your 1D opener is also very very good, same as 1M I'm just not as orgasmic about it since it's less preemptive and you need to bid less aggressive games and stuff when you don't have majors. As far as strong club, I think it's a net winner, but I think making it 15+ is worse than 16+ since you're more vulnerable to preemption which makes competitive bidding harder. Obviously you have a lot of experience with strong club though, and it just comes down to personal taste whether its 15+ or 16+ or 17+ so I won't harp on it too much. I will say again though that I think you can open a lot of 9s if your upper range is 14 rather than 15 though and get away with it. The 2 bids are obviously a wild card, and are a double edged sword (it makes life hard on them, and makes life tough for you if it's your hand). IMO they will be very good though, sure it might be tough sometimes but having it defined as 6+ cards makes competitive bidding easier, and it's a good start on constructive bidding, and obviously the preemptive effect if it's their hand is great, or if it's a competitive hand you shut them out or make them go too high a lot. Overall, I really like the 2 bids. They are way better than Fantunes imo. I don't like multi but it's necessary in your system so it's fine, especially since most people don't know how to defend against it. Even if people did, you're not losing that much. As far as relaying it rather than bidding semi-naturally, that is again personal taste, so I won't even comment. I would love to play this systems basic structure but not relay (again, just not my personal taste, not saying it's wrong or right) some time. I think it would be a lot of fun, it would get you in there a lot, and it would put a lot of pressure immediately on the opponents. IMO pressuring them = making them make mistakes = winning bridge. This system has pressure written all over it, but with CONTROL, and with pretty well defined starting bids. I just hope I don't open 2C very often ;)

Heh, but it's worth way less. There's a 2 day swiss at the end of both the spring and summer nationals, and they are both extremely tough events since there are either 2 or 4 teams left in the spingold/vandy when they start. There are probably 40 really good teams these that enter each of those events, so 36 or 38 of them are left to play the 2 day swisses. Compare this to the 3 day swiss which starts the same day as arguably the most prestigious national event that exists, and certainly one of the top 3 most prestigious, and its a much much easier event. I'm quite sure they have the 3 day swiss to make the Reisinger more prestigious. After all, the goal should be for the main event to be MORE presitigious, not for the secondary event to be more prestigious at the expense of the primary one. Would the Cavendish have its allure if there was 8 random pairs for every star studded one? Of course not. The Reisinger is not a random crap shoot because it's starts off very small and very tough, and by the end it is one section and insanely tough. If the finals had 5 sections with some pretty good teams who lucked in and had no chance, some good teams that were probably 50/50 to make it with such a big field, and some great teams, it would just be which great teams beat up on the weak ones better, and ultimately which ones got luckier to play the bad teams when they made the stupid mistakes, and which ones got fixed by the stupid mistakes the most. Sorry to say it, but ultimately every pair game ends up like this except for the blue ribbons, but even that is quite large at the end (3 sections, with basically open entry so there are a ton of random pairs who could get lucky and get into the final breaking average every session). I am all for everyone being able to play everyone, and I think it's great that that is how everything is set up. However, most teams don't want to play in an event that they have no chance of winning, so making the secondary event start at the same time allows those people to enter that, allows the teams that want to take a shot to enter the main event, and makes the event less random and tougher, which is good for everyone. For this reason I am also in favor of all the 0-5000 events that exist, except there are a lot of random/bad >5000 players who have no chance of winning also, so I wish it was more like "The Blue Ribbon Pairs" and the "3 day imp pairs" going at the same time, aka an unrestricted secondary event. Again, if this were to happen, the main events need to award a different color point, and be categorized as a main event. Right now the Reisinger/NA swiss are the only combo of open national events that go on at the same time, I'm happy to see the Platinum Pairs/imp pairs will be the same way, and expect it to easily surpass the Blue Ribbons as the most prestigious pair game in the world, and that is BECAUSE of the existence of the imp pairs. It's good for everyone.

I think a LOT is a definitely overstatement, but surely it is true that the more evenly distributed the high cards the better so you have entries etc. As far as simulating it, I'm not sure what would happen, but I find it hard to believe that even double dummy game is not >40 % opposite a bal 19 count with 4-5 diamonds and 2-3 hearts. Even if it was less, they will frequently make the wrong lead in real life and that will often be the decider on a thin game. This combined with the possibility that they will later misdefend is much more likely than you going down when you could have made it double dummy. Also, even if it is slightly less, it could be ok because you don't have the option of playing 1N. I mean to take a very extreme scenario, if game was 25 % to make, and 75% to go down 2, and they never doubled you should bid 3N in this case. Obviously that is completely artificial, but you see my point that you gain some extra edge in bidding from that fact (and also, sometimes misdefenses/wrong leads cost 2 or 3 tricks rather than just 1, so this factor plays in, etc). Basically, you don't really need that high of a double dummy percentage to go from 2N to 3N red at imps, and in close situations I would always err on that side. Admittedly against my argument is the fact that LHO MAY double given that our hearts are so weak, he might have strong hearts and want to ask for that lead, which means we need a higher percentage to bid 3N than normal. But IMO 24-25 highs, some useful spots, and our values reasonably well placed is definitely enough of an excuse to go. There is a regular poster here, Fluffy, who likes to play 2N as forcing, and could contain some hand types other than 18-19 balanced. However that is a very uncommon treatment, at least in USA (can't speak for other countries). I think the modern trend, and especially for some of those that have already posted, is to respond with less than 6 quite often. On this forum I am known for taking that possibly to an extreme, but generally I do not pass if a game is possible, meaning a hand with a 5 card major and 4 or 5 points is pretty much always a response, a hand with an ace is a response, etc. I also try very hard to respond with a stiff in partner's minor. Again, I am on the extreme side, but there has definitely been a trend to respond light. If you don't include other hand types in 2N other than 18-19 balanced, there's not really any reason to play it as forcing given that that is a very tight range, and you are well placed to bid accordingly. However, if you never respond with less than 6, it might be smart to add in some other hand types to unload your jumpshifts.

We hadn't dicussed it. If we agree X is penalty I must pass? You can bid 2H Only as a passed hand? 2H is just a competitive bid, it is a free bid at the 2 level so it shows some values also, maybe like 6-10. You don't need that much to bid when your partner makes a takeout double though. Since it's not a forcing bid, it would never show an opening hand (that hand would bid game or cuebid), so it doesn't make a difference if you're a PH or not.

We hadn't dicussed it. If we agree X is penalty I must pass? You can bid 2H

Seems like you missed the chance of someone having a doubleton club and a doubleton spade? That is quite significant.

Curt: All of the squeezes you say are possible, but that does not mean you can execute them all without giving up on others. It's like saying that in a 2 way finesse situation you can pick up the queen on either side. Consequently I definitely question this statement: