JLOL

Unless you play GB2NT or something similar (or maybe stone age Acol?), 3♣, a new suit at the 3-level, is forcing. Huh? Very very strongly disagree. Honestly I only didn't LOL because I have a lot of respect for skaeran, but this is not true. You cannot pass with a 55 15/16 count for instance, but you also don't have enough to force. You CAN cuebid if you want to force (or jump shift with 4C). As Clee pointed out in a recent thread, the "new suit is forcing at the 3 level" rule only responds to responders, not openers or overcallers.

double post.

Yes, it doesn't have to be quite this precise, you can play ace and a diamond towards dummy immediately, if lefty ruffs you are cold so he pitches, then you can play 2 rounds of trumps 3 rounds of clubs, trump, club.

Ouch 553, they got you what can you do... Even if you knew they might bid 3N with Kxx of spades and a club void and 55 (lol) it would still be clearly percentage to cash out.

If North trusts partner and partner actually played a LOW club at trick 1 then he should get this right. I will admit that I don't trust most of the people I play with enough to do this, but playing with a good partner north definitely gets a charge. If North was playing with an untrustworthy partner I think in the real world he *might* get it right anyways because declarer probably didn't take too long to play this hand and happily played a trump at trick 2. If he had nothing in hearts he probably would play a diamond at trick 2, or at least agonize for a while. FWIW I don't like a style where one opens the south hand with a weak 2 2nd seat r/w, and I hate the 2D overcall at the other table.

Do people think 2N here is natural or something? I thought that if you bid this was an obvious 2N and would expect partner to pass 3C with 1 more club than diamond. Also I think the fact that RHO is third seat changes this problem a lot, the opps might have only a 43 fit which decreases our chance of finding a fit and increases the amount that we will beat them. Overall I think I would pass, but don't feel great about it. edit: just noticed that Ken also bid 2N rather than 3C... weird I am starting to agree with you Ken more than anyone Oo

LOL I'm glad you agree. One of the few things we agree on! LOL

If declarer has a club then he has 8 club tricks and 1 spade. It is almost impossible for him to not have the HA, his max would be something like the SK, the DQJ, the HQJ, and the CQ and thats still not an opener. So he definitely has a heart and we should cash out (at best we can break even by not doing so, and we lose immediately when he has AQ of hearts or Qx of clubs by not doing so). If declarer does not have a club his 3N bid is very weird, with 55 he would bid 3D and with 6 hearts he would bid 3H, so the only possible shape would be 4540 in which case we can still wreck his communications by cashing our DK and playing a spade so we will beat him anyways, probably several, even though we might have beat him 1 more if we didn't cash out. So it seems pretty trivial to cash our DK since it caters to very likely layouts.

The great spots would be enough for me to invite though it is quite rare for me to do so with an aceless 4333 8. I think attempting to play spades would be terrible, I never have a quanititative raise to 2N available but if it is part of your methods I would be really happy to use it.

Josh, I don't think partner should pass X then 3N with 4414. I mean, I could definitely think of many 3334s/3325s that I would X and bid 3N with, probably most that only had 1 diamond stopper. But 3N doesn't seem like any bargain opposite 1 diamond stopper anyways when we have a stiff diamond, and partner will probably have 4 spades greater than 50 % of the time anyways when he bids that way. Anyways, maybe your point was just that we might miss a 44 spade fit which is definitely true since if partner is balanced I would expect him to always pass 3N, just thought it was interesting to think about what partner should do with 4414 since I don't think it's clear. Also I think that the comment about the possibility that Xing and passing 3H being right to be a bit fatuous, of course it could be but at this point we should all be comfortable assinging partner 6 or 7 points or whatever and bidding accordingly in these spots, we rarely have a hand where it might be wrong to pass the 3 level when partner could have nothing.

This is why I play 7S p p X as takeout. Partner bids 7N and you make because the void is on lead, and 7S was cold because their hand was 13 solid.

LOL

Pass the first time. In your actual auction I would bid 4S over 3H and don't think it's close.

I would double and bid 3N over 3H, and 4S over 4C.

Maybe I don't understand the system but this seems like a trivial 3S bid?

Can you clarify this? Did lefty lead low or high etc..would be nice to know if spades are 53 or 62 and we should know already.

Definitely would drive to game, the question is just whether or not to bid 3H. The upside of 3H is that you might find a 44 or 54 heart fit which definitely looks good on this hand (will often be a trick better than spades). The downside is you give away information a lot and the opponents might not lead a heart or might defend better now. Pretty close, I usually just blast game on this type of hand rather than look for hearts but this hand looks so particularly good for hearts over spades if we find th fit that I think it's worth bidding 3H.

Do you think you can make any meaningful conclusions from this? I would guess that a much higher %age of pickup partnerships play strong NT than the %age of regular partnerships that play strong NT which means that the weak NT pairs in your database are much more likely to be a regular partnership than a strong NT pair. This alone gives them a big edge since they will have agreements, and will be more likely to be experts. Not only that but I think that weak NT is very hard for people without agreements to defend against, since there is a higher chance that it is their hand for game and they are effectively preempted. Not just that, but if you don't know whats forcing, what subsequent doubles mean, how to get to 44 fits, how many HCP your partner is showing, etc, then it is a MUCH more effective preempt than even a weak 2 where people know how to play takeout doubles and what bids mean and such. Can you imagine how good weak 2s would be against most people if they had the same lack of knowledge and understanding and experience that they did over weak NT in general? This lack of knowledge as to how to find fits and bid game when the opps open a weak NT applies also when the opps open a STRONG NT, but the difference is it doesn't matter nearly as often now.

Yes his numbers are wrong, you even lose only 5 if you go down 2 in 3N and 1N makes 1, and also only lose 5 if you go down 2 in 4H vs 110. On a good day the opponents will only beat you 1 in 3N or 4M since you are in game and their goal is just to set you, and your counterparts will play safe to make their contract, since theyre only in 1N or 2M, and you will only lose 4! Of course this could work the other way and you go down an extra trying to make your contract on an unlikely layout and you lose 6. The whole concept of bidding game at imps white like you are playing MP is bogus obviously since it is 6 vs 5 in normal cases, but it is also bogus for perhaps a less obvious reason. Let's say you are a good card player. If the contract is especially difficult to make but you find the right line that most people won't find because they aren't as skillfull, or if the contract is hopeless and you find the right way to swindle them into letting you make, or if the opponents simply let you make more often than you go down cold because you are better than them then you are winning 1 imp if you aren't in game, and 7 if you are in game (note, you are now winning 7 instead of 6!). That extra trick was worth a lot BECAUSE you were in game. If you were playing matchpoints, then all of this equity you have because of your cardplay edge doesn't matter nearly as much because if you make 170 into a bunch of 140s or 150 into a bunch of 120s then you gain nothing by bidding game. In that case you only want to bid game if a majority of people did also, which you can assume they didn't since we're discussing whether or not to be aggressive in trying for game or not and you can assume more than half the field is not. This is negated a little bit by the fact that you may get doubled, but I would say I make more no play games or games where you might take one of two lines and get it right more often than I get doubled by a lot, so it really doesn't negate it anything close to the amount it would need to for you to start bidding games at white imps just like you're playing matchpoints. You could of course make the argument that if you make 45 % games more than 45 % of the time, they were not in fact 45 % games (durrrrrr). But the thing is if the best line is 45 %, and I make it an additional 7 % by deviating from that sometimes then I would still not want to be in that game at MP assuming it's an aggressive game. Obviously I would be happy to be in that game white at imps. Plus in general when people say a game is x% they are just calculating what is quantifiable, taking the best line of play and crunching how often that succeeds, since it is impossible to calculate how many times you will get them to do idiotic things vs how often you will do something idiotic lol. In reality conventional wisdom to just bid white games at imps somewhere between the amount that you're bidding game at MP and bidding game red at imps is easily correct.

Jan, I don't get it...I think Frances has probably played a lot of weak NT so it is not because she is unfamiliar with it that she finds competitive auctions more difficult. Maybe I'm wrong and just assume she has played a lot of weak NT because she is English, I am totally making an assumption so maybe you know she's played strong NT her whole life and I don't :rolleyes: Anyways, I am probably equally familiar with them (I played almost only weak NT when I started, then variable, and now mostly strong), and I agree that in competitive auctions when I don't open 1N I prefer to play a strong NT system, but I also agree it's pretty close. Sometimes you win playing weak NT because responder can bid more easily knowing partner has an unbalanced hand or extras, but often opener has some awkward problems because a strong NT hand type is not always comfortable just passing on his second bid like a weak NT hand type would be. A prototypical auction that's very difficult for weak NTers is 1D (2S) p p. If opener is passing it out with his flat 16 he might well be missing something. Partner could have a flat 9 that he couldn't make a negative double with (3235 or whatever), or partner could have a shapely hand with not so many high cards that he is not comfortable bidding with that makes a partscore or game opposite the right strong NT but gets way too high opposite a misfitting unbalanced hand type. Also some auctions are difficult when you are unbalanced and the opponents bid your second best suit, and you are forced to bid something on the second round. For instance an easy auction like 1C 2H 2S p ? If 2N shows a strong NT here, then you have to bid something with a 1435 12 count which is pretty ugly. Also the concept of 1m p 1M p 2M showing "a strong NT or an unbalanced hand" can be a nice benefit, but it is simply not true that all unbalanced openers with a fit are the equivalent in playing strength to a strong NT so you end up having a range that is effectively too wide. You can play a style where you open a little sounder with a minor and an unbalanced hand to alleviate that, but I think that the fix is bigger than the problem then. The other thing is, if you ever like raising with 3 card support and a singleton, you are really overbidding if you play a weak NT system. Certainly a 1345 12 count is not worth 15 and 4 trumps balanced, but opening 1m(your choice) and rebidding 2C is a loss in my opinion. Also, speaking of that 1435 12 count, if you are like me then you like having the option of rebidding 1N with that after 1C p 1S p ? This is not an option playing weak NT. Of course you do get to rebid 1N with 15/16 now, but the weaker hand type is much much more frequent, and with 17 you could probably reverse anyways. etc etc. But like I said, it is often easier as responder when you're playing a weak NT system, but imo competitive auctions are better playing a strong NT system.

Think for a really long time then call for the SK from dummy?

4H was just too much, as others mentioned if east had the hypothetical hand you posted he would drive to slam after a slam try. West's hand was only worth 1 slam try. My initial reaction was that the 4N bid was beyond awful, similarly bad as 4H, but I guess west can have KQxxx Kxx xxx Ax and bid this way and pass a 4S signoff by east, so I will say that easts bid is merely bad.

OK, I'll bite - why? Showing 4♠? I didnt double because I thought if West had ♠ and not ♥'s then partner is left bidding ♦'s with my xxx. Maybe this makes no sense ,,its late. When partner redoubles he's saying you guys have more points than them, and subsequent doubles are penalty. This is especially true if partner won't redouble wtih a good fit or a good five card suit, because his hand will typically be balanced or 3 suited short in your suit. If you have 4 good trumps you are supposed to double. If partner has a stiff heart he will pull at the 1 level since he knows they have an 8 card fit, and if partner has 2 hearts and 10/11 points you can expect to do very well on defense when you have your actual hand.

It's true you should double 4H, but you should also have doubled 1H!

New proposed Event Name: The Josh Donn Spingold. :( This is more commonly known as the mini spingold