hotShot

From: http://www.bridgehands.com/F/ Fert - To open with a weak opening hand (7 points or less) at the one-level. Fert calls are normally associated with partners who play a Strong Pass system. The term Fert is actually a colloquial term, derived from the term "fertilizer".

If I would overbid a Precision 1♣ with every hand with 2♠ ignoring my shape and strength. I would consider that destructive. But I don't know why there should be a rule against it, because I would pay with terribly bad scores most of the time. And I doubt that my partner would wish to continue the partnership. Now let us assume we would allow a system where pass is 13+, 1♦,1♥ and 1♠ show 4+ cards in the suit and 8-12 HCP, while the 1♣ bid could be a FERT or 8-12 with 3334 shape (no 4card suit but ♣). That is hardly more complicated that polish club. 1♣ is close enough to pass not to cause much disturbance and since players are familiar with 1♣ opening that don't show clubs or have other meanings it's not to hard to get used to it. I would not think that this system contains destructive bids.

I'd bid 2♠. If the strong clubber open 16+ HCP and I have 13 HCP, there are 11 HCP left for the other 2 players. If I open 2♠ opps have the problem, that they did not show a suit up to now, and don't know anything about their fit. Additionally they will more often have 16 +5(6) HCP as sufficient strength for game. Openers partner will usually have to pass, giving little information to his partner. This will make it harder for opener to find a fit or a penalty dbl. If I open 1♠ opps can find their fit at the 2 level and are in a better position to reevaluate their hands knowing about their fit. This might allow them to compete at the 3 level or find their rare games.

I hope that it is save to assume that partner did not open 2NT with a single or void in ♥.

How many red cards can I ruff with my 3 small spades? How many of my ♠ loser are covered by partners 1♠ bid? My hand is stronger in ♣ so the choices are 3♣, 4♣ or 5♣. Since 4♣ might have a different use, I can't use that with a pickup partner. So I overbid in 5♣.

Thank You!

Does anybody use Bissell count and how do you calculate them?

The 7 missing ♥ are KQJxxxx so I estimate that holding the average 2.33 cards in ♥ give you a close to 50% chance to have one of the honors. Additionally if 2NT shows 20-21 and my hand contains 10 than partner has (more) than 66.6% of the HCP. If you combine these it is not unlikely that the chance to find QH with partner is as big as suggested.

If you psych once in 12 boards and usually w/r this means in fact that you are psyching once on the 3 out of 12 boards where your side is w/r. If we assume that half of this 3 boards belong to your side anyway, your partner has to guess about your psyche in somewhere near 1 of 1.5 of the boards. This is very close to a partnership agreement. Lets assume there are 10 kinds of psyches ( psyching a stopper, psyching a control, psyching a suit ....) , at a rate of 1 psyche/ 12 boards you will made all after 120 boards. So in your next bigger tourney with that partner you will have to repeat a psyche. At the third tourney your partner will know all your psyches. And given the above he will be able to pinpoint a low number of boards in which you might be psyching.

4H I think I've shown 6♥, 4♠ and the A of ♣ all that with a shaped hand. Partners ♦ control is not very encouraging. Next move is up to partner.

It's the amount of dept that causes the problem. Once the interest payments get to a level where it restricts the choices you can make it gets a bad thing. All the money that goes to repayment and interest is missing for infrastructure, education and other important tasks or even worse taxes have to be raised to get the money.

Thats what commentators are for. I don't know American Football, but for guys like me the commentators explain, why a team suddenly goes for the field goal and no longer try for a touchdown. If you watch cycling it's their job to explain the team tactics. There are several sports with some strange form of scoring, explaining what's going on that is what the commentators have to do.

I don't know much about poker, but I would have thought that poker would be boring to watch, but with computed percentages a good expert explaining the possible continuations it's interesting to watch. I have seen great tv shows on chess, where Experts explained possible continuations or threats. It's my impression that thanks to BBO, watching Bridge has become more popular than it was 10 years ago. The fun watching vugraph depends a lot on the commentators. If they are familiar with the system and can explain what kind of problem the player is trying to solve. Comments like "according to GIB 3NT makes" and no disclosure about bids can reduce the fun a lot. The future of bridge depends a lot on our ability to make it viewable. Media presence is essential to promote bridge. There it depends on the commentators to explain the different systems and discuss their advantages and disadvantages while nothing spectacular is going on.

When people play soccer in private, they use false balls and wrong sized goals, they build teams that don't have 11 players, they substitute players as often as they want and usually they don't have proper markings on the ground. In short they adapt the rules as they like. Since they know that they don't perform at world class level they accept knowingly that they ignore rules to fit the game to their needs. The difference is that many bridge player don't even know the rules, and are unaware that they bend them. Even at soccer pros don't know all the rules .... This weekend a pro in Greece learned that he did not know the rules good enough. He tackled a streaker to help the security people to clear the field and was rewarded with a red card and had to leave the field. Player are not allowed to tackle on the field, not even people that are not part of the game.....

The former: Most hands are in the 7-12 HCP range, so you open more hands, when you adopt a forcing-pass system. A relatively safe low-level exchange of useful information helps the the partnership whether you end up declaring or defending. Also, you consume opponents' bidding space, winning more partscore battles. Well the information is also available, if the declarer is on the other side. This declarer is in a better informed than those in his seat at the other tables, that have no information on opps cards. About 65% of the deals the dealer holds up to 12 HCP. If you are forced to open all of them, you will notice that about 1/3 of them is 0-6 HCP. 44% is 0-7 HCP. So a little less than half of the time the FP-player opens, the average strength of our side 23,2 HCP (avg on the 0-7 HCP range). This is usually not enough to make game, but enough to benefit from your side going down with dbl. The point is that too few people play FP-systems, so even fewer are optimizing defenses. So there are no well established defenses available that were tested by hundreds of pairs. FP-systems like any other system have there upsides and downsides. Only if a system is played by a sufficient number of pairs an base of defenses will evolve and after some more time, we could see if there is a real benefit to the system. Banning a system or convention just creates a myth of superiority.

We believe that it's a benefit if opps can't exchange information, so we preempt with NT openings that get weaker and weaker. People playing a forcing pass system leave the 1 level to LHO so (s)he can inform his/her partner about his/her hand. So preempting is overrated or forcing pass openings are not as superior as some think. We don't open below opening strength without shape, in forcing pass systems you are forced to open such hands. So opening strength is overrated or forcing pass systems are not as superior as some think. But playing against forcing pass systems my agreed system won't work. Our openings in 2nd seat won't happen, because the HCP requirement is to high behind the strength of the opening forcing pass. If opps open, we don't have a penalty dbl, because we agreed that dbl is t/o up to 2♠. As a result we might miss some of our partscores/games and we won't punish opps weak openings. This does not prove that a FP-system is good, it just proves that we are unprepared.

After the bidding I'm not sure if I get rid of my ♦ loser. So I stick with 6♥.

Pass

I miss a lot of spades, but at this level I don't believe that opps forgot that they play transfer. So the ♠ are 4441 (or opener has 5 low ♠'s) and ♥ are 6520 or 6421. That leaves partner with 8-9 cards in the minors. I don't like it but 3NT seems the best choice.

A main factor of judgment is information. Playing a strong club, relay system responder has very little information about openers hand. Little information leads to poor judgment.

Governments all over the world have used terrorism as argument to implement legislation that should not exist in a free democratic country. All those people who agreed to these laws saying that they have noting to hide, should take a good look at this case. A lot of this legislation has to be corrected or simply removed.

The only reason to bid 3♦ when you can bid 5♦ on your own, is to try for 3NT. Would you go for 3NT with a void? If there is no void in ♥ then I guess my hand should make ♥A and ♣AK leading to 5♦-1. Do we make 5♥ We might not have loser in ♥ or ♦, but there are 3-4 loser in ♠ and 1-2 in ♣. Partner made the weakest bid possible, so I doubt that he can cover enough loser so that we make 5♥. If he has tricks in ♠ the will bring 5♦ down another trick as well. If dbl is penalty, then dbl otherwise I'll just pass.

Me too, but having a simple decision if pass is forcing or not is not a simple thing... Does anyone have a limited set of rules? FYI, partner had: [hv=d=e&v=n&s=sj3ha7dkj4cakj962]133|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] You had: [hv=d=e&v=n&s=sj3ha7dkj4cakj962]133|100|Scoring: IMP[/hv] How can both of you have the K of ♣?

Do we have Minorwood or Voidwood in our agreements? Yes => 2NT followed by Minorwood/Voidwood seems like a good plan. No => 1♣ followed by cheapest of: - a ♦ bid up to 4♦ - - 4NT pick a minor - 5♣ if everything else is not possible

Lionel, because it works against any NT-range.