Jlall

LOL! Who do you post mortem with? You should get your money back. He is kenrexfords old partner so we know what crowd he hands with :) JK, speaking of which KEN WHERE ARE YOU?

I think systemically bidding 2H with this hand kinda sucks. I am really not a fan of systemically rebidding 1N, but a lot of people do that. I think some of the more reasonable people who play that agree with what is obvious to me, that you are LOSING by bidding 1N with this shape in general, but you gain by having 1S promise an unbalanced hand. I think a lot of them seem to think they are winning by bidding 1N with this hand, and also winning by having a better defined 1S rebid, which is LOL to me, I guess it's so awesome that you just always win! I could see that if people agree to rebid 1N with this shape, that they might raise to 2H with very suit oriented 3 card raises, since their alternative is not to rebid 1S. I'm not a huge fan of raising with 3 in balanced hands and this hand would not qualify, but I could see someone judging to bid 2H if their system mandated bidding 1N with this shape otherwise. Rebidding 2H systemically with this shape rather than either 1S or 1N is just horrible to me though. I think 1S is clearly better whenever it's just a partial hand because: A) Sometimes you have a 4-4 spade fit! B ) Sometimes you belong in 1N when you have a balanced hand! C) Sometimes you have a 4-4 club fit! You might lose when you miss your 5-3 heart fit on a partial hand, oh well. I think people also underestimate that fact that it's generally a bigger disaster to play 2H with a 4-3 heart fit than 1N with a 5-3 heart fit when you have a balanced hand. It's way more likely that the 4-3 heart fit is going to play ONE trick worse than 1N than it is that the 5-3 heart fit is going to take TWO tricks better than 1N. You sometimes luck out when partner has 5 hearts if he has 4 spades or 4 clubs anyways. Basically missing 2H on a 5-3 is not the end of the world. When comparing 2H to 1N though you no longer find 4-4 spades either way, and you no longer get to 2C, so you're just comparing if 1N will generally play better than 2H. So you might choose to bid 2H even though I would bid 1N if that's my system. One more factor, 2H is better than 1S if partner has a game try over 2H but a non game try over something else. These hands exist because fits sometimes improve our hand! So the fact that we have a 14 count should be an argument for 2H. That said our 14 is very soft with no aces etc, so it's not clear we are going to make game opposite the 9/10 counts wtih 5 hearts that game try even though we have 14. This is especially true because partner will probably have a stiff in a black suit with these hands! Against this, there are also hands that will bid 3S over 1S, but pass 2H. These hands also usually have a stiff club though (4441 9/10 count). Edit: Just noted that this is MP which really strengthens the case for 1S because it's just better when you have a partial IMO. I would hate to play a system that forces a 1N rebid with this shape at MP even more than usual!

I think at least if it's expert vs expert the players themselves can fix this by not pausing a full 10 seconds over the stupid ones (say 2 seconds), and pausing normally over the ones they should. In fact I think this is generally what happens. I also think that the regulation stating that you must pause 10 seconds over a skip should be done away with to say you must keep an even tempo over a skip. Tempo is different for everyone, and 10 seconds is a lot different to player A and player B. A regulation that you must pause for 10 seconds over all skips is definitely really stupid though, maybe that's why I hate the stop card because it eliminates the self-correcting behavior.

If you play this method it seems like you should have well structured followups, even if they're simple. For instance even jacoby 2N has well structured followups. I guess I'd just bid 3D.

Gotta hate when they make you show a GF hand with 5+ hearts at the 3 level when you have 6 good hearts and a very solid opening bid.

I play gnasher's suggested method of having 2 ways to bid 3N, one demanding a preference with 3 trumps and one allowing opener to use judgement with 3 trumps. Maybe this is largely influenced by my style of trying to get to the right game accuracte vs not giving up info, but I rarely use the bid that makes partner bid game with 3 trumps always because I almost always prefer transferring and bidding my minor. The hands I do use it on are the ones gnasher speaks of, 5431 with stiff honor and many 5422s. I just think these don't come up that often.

Yes. Even if hearts are 2-2 there is a chance the defense goes diamond to the ace, ace of spades spade to the king and a trump promo on the next spade. Or if they're nasty and it's stiff Q of hearts and 3-3 spades they fake the trump promo and you ruff jack and lose to T8x of hearts lol. Against that, sometimes they will fail to shift to spades when it's right and you will make even with Qxx of hearts somewhere because clubs are 3-3. Also, you might figure out how to guess hearts some non 0 % of the time.

I was the 4S bidder, no doubt those who know me will not be surprised heh. I think it's a huge winner against weak opps who will frequently misjudge. The weaker the opps the more often they bid 5H imo, and the less often you go for 800 vs a non slam (the biggest downside of bidding 4S with my hand by far I think). Also you are more likely to screw a pair at the club out of a slam more often than a good pair. I would just bid 3S vs good opps though since I think 800 is a pretty plausible risk. At the time I bid 4S I thought one of the biggest risks is that partner will misjudge and bid 5S too often, but I guess this hand shows that thought was wrong. Partner is rarely gonna bid 5S over 5H in this auction. I think if partner knew my hand he would have bid 5S. True the opps might be on for a slam, but even if that's the case it's not necessarily true that they won't bid it if you pass, but will bid it if you bid. I think even if they're on for a slam if you know you're going down 2 you should bid and make them get it right. The chance of them going down is super duper small, what are the odds they've bid 5H with a doubleton spade and a doubleton diamond? The chance that you go down 3 on diamond ruffs is definitely real though in 5S. So those are three scenarios where bidding 5S is wrong even knowing my hand, but the by far most likely scenario is the jdonn scenario (down 2 into their make) I think so it's worth it. But it's close. My partner passed fwiw.

1) 4S obv 2) I would never have just bid 3S, this hand is way too good. Now the question is does 4D slow slam interest or just say "I want to create a forcing pass in case they bid 5C." I think it's the latter, but my hand is so good I'm worth 5H along the way anyways. If it's the former then we have a slam force. BTW passing with the intention of passing and pulling to 5H is not a good plan imo since you can't bid 6 necessarily if partner bids 5S, and then you've never shown your slam try.

Kranyak was in the bulletin once for leading the jack from this and catching Tx on right and Qxx on left :P

Yeah it sucks

8 is completely standard.

bitter much?

Partner had QJ9x xx xxx Jxxx. How good/bad/crazy is his 4S bid? Would you want to bid 5S if you knew his hand?

Yes people often mistakenly pass 2N transfer 3N with 4333, very good point.

Yeah I think a leaderboard of some kind could be a good idea. Top 10 weekly or w/e. Then dumb people like me would start playing just to try and hit it!

Yeah just want to reiterate that if you are gonna use judgement, you should have the rules in place for what you do on every hand type else you might be caught thinking and whatever you choose after thinking the opps will know you're very likely to be some 4333.

The hand with you in the pairs in Turkey where I made 10 tricks in 3N with 11 tops on a 3-3 break woulda been a good one to post too... although I think I did that like 8 times that event :(

Little old lady owned my soul. What are little old ladies reffered to? Oh yeah... LOL

Bob Hamman told me a long time ago to always pass with 4333, and to be ready with that shape so that you aren't always thinking and giving away that you're 4333.

[hv=n=sa732h8d92caq9532&s=skj4hqt75dakqt4c7]133|200|[/hv] Playing at the club I get to 3N after north shows 6C, 4S, and 10-12 and I just asked. LHO before leading says "I HAVE TO LEAD??? :( :(" "CAN YOU SHOW ME YOUR HAND?" and deliberates for a while before coming up with the H2. RHO wins the A and returns the H3. I expertly put in the 7 catering to AJ9x on my right, and am rewarded when LHO wins the king. Now she deliberates and plays a spade. I win RHOs queen with my king, and remembering LHOs rant before her lead place her with 4-4 in the red suits to have such a lead problem. Accordingly I play a diamond to the 9 and it wins. Now I can run diamonds coming down to this endgame: [hv=n=sa732h8d92caq9532&s=skj4hqt75dakqt4c7]133|200|[/hv] If RHO started with 4 spades she must be down to 3 spades and Jx of hearts, and a club to the ace will squeeze her. If RHO started life with 2 spades, giving LHO 4441, I must cash 2 rounds of spades squeezing RHO in clubs and hearts. If spades were 3-3 to begin with I'm home of course no matter what I do. Of course even if I guess wrong I already have a top already from the early play, but I want to put the cherry on the cake. As I ponder this and think about their discards and realize I can play spade spade and... I wake up! In reality after I played the heart 7, LHO won with the 9 and returned a heart to her partner's king. RHO then produced...the heart jack for an original holding of AKJx! Oh no... Now I really needed to steal a trick back, and going with my original instincts about the lead problem I lead a diamond towards the 9, LHO instantly popping J with Jxx. Making 3. Next time.

r/r MP: AKxxx x KQJxx xx RHO opens 1H, you bid 2H, LHO bids 2S, partner bids 4S, and RHO bids tank 5H. You? Can't even decide if this is close or not but I know the whole hand so I think I'm biased.

Big believer in just bidding 4H with the north hand. If for no other reason the opps might judge incorrectly to save in 5D, or they might be cold for 4D if the max you can make is 3H and they might bid it (and they would almost definitely bid 5D over 4H if that's the case). Sure it may seem like poker to you but again, I'm a big believer in it. edit: But fwiw if there were no competitive considerations I prefer the game try so it's a reasonable evaluation of the hand.

Seems like it would discourage people from playing if they were bad, or at least embarass people who are bad. It also might encourage people who have been doing well to quit so that their rating stays high. I think the same arguments that have always existed against rating systems still exist for these.

Yes you are right, I miscounted the tricks and thought we only had 8 with 5-0 diamonds on right. Oddly gnasher made the same mistake! Since I want to blame someone else obv, minor gripe but I prefer if the whole hand is posted and the tricks are explained unless it's an end position. I don't think of this as a 12 trick end position though I guess you could, it's more natural to me if all 13 cards are presented and we're just told how trick 1 went.