cherdanno

It's hard to find 11-card fits in a minor over a 1S preempt! (If that stops you from bidding your 7-card suit.)

If 2NT is an artificial bid to sign off, then I don't think 3♣ shows any more clubs than we have already shown. How else could partner sign off in clubs?

Why not? This thread is still so lol. Oh no, we would play 1NT instead of 1♠ in a 5-0 fit, we can't let that happen! Or, god forbid, partner might bid 2N and we have to play 3H instead of 1S!!!

I wonder how many of the "Liberal Party" votes were for a "liberal" party in the American sense, and how many in the European sense.

Well I guess you are really asking how to use the choice of games after finding a 4-4 fit. I have no experience with this convention but if I were to play it tomorrow I am sure my main criterion as opener for deciding about 3NT would be shape/prime values/good trumps in this order. So I would probably pass with many hands where 3NT is bad. I don't think partner's actual hand is a pass though.

2♠. Not forcing. Partner passes with minimum, bid 2NT with extras, wtp? Uh, this is an obvious game force the way most of us play reverses. If it's not a game force to you, because you reverse extremely light, then it might still have been obvious to you that Han was making the point of what you want to do with a hand with 5 spades that doesn't want to bid a non-forcing 2S, because it is too strong. But apparently you prefer to divert from that point.

Thanks guys. I am actually in China this week, and our conference dinner was strangely on Tuesday, so I did get a nice Chinese banquet at my birthday...

The opening bid was 1NT not 2NT.

Ken, you must be miscounting cards or something.

I will bookmark whereagles' post just in case I need some ammunition to make fun of loser count at some point.

Happy birthday! Thanks for posting the pointer to that ratatouille recipe btw, it was delicious!

Try reading the auction again.

Pop quiz: which partnership has the longest experience playing together (in number of boards)? Hint:

Yeah of course Andy was right, 6D is lazy. Btw, Han, when did you get too shy to bid new suits at the 3-level? You've only been back in Europe for a year!

If almost everyone is in 4S, then 6D is definitely better than 6S. But still a 7 for 6S is really low. I would think it makes 75%+% of the time: they only bid to 3H on a 10-card fit, so a good spade break is even more likely than the 85% rpbridge.net calculates under the assumption of hearts being 6-4; and if they have a diamond ruff they still have to find it.

1) 3C, i think the chance of partner having 3 clubs only is small enough. I don't like the 4-3 fit with such bad trumps. 2) 3D 3) 6D. I think at worst this will be on 2-2 diamonds, and it can be much better.

Ben, 6=4 is a VERY normal holding in the majors for bidding 1♠ and doubling 3♣, why are you ignoring this shape?

Wow, now a heart is even supposed to be productive? I think the one layout where a heart sets up a trick (LHO needs a singleton AND partner needs HT or HH among his 3 cards) is just not as likely as the one where it costs (partner having no honor). Not that I feel strongly about which lead is right, but I prefer a diamond over a heart.

Ben you really can't score this one based on double-dummy analysis. To make 10 tricks you need either both spade honors onside, or you need to - first guess the clubs (assuming there is a way to establish a club trick), to develop a spade pitch, and then - have one spade honor onside and guess correctly which one. That's a lot of guessing that your double-dummy simulator did for you there. (Btw, even double dummy my quick simulation showed 3D making 10+ tricks only 60% of the time, so I really don't know where you got the big difference between 3D and 1N from.)

Andy, if responder had ♥K, why wouldn't he show it by bidding 6♥? He also knows it's matchpoints. My reasoning about the ♦Q will probably sound less convincing - if the 4D cuebid shows a king, then responder could arguably show the ♦Q by bidding 6D. If he thinks it might be shortness, then the ♦Q is not great asset for bidding 7♣. Of course, opener might find another excuse to bid 7N - responder's most likely extras are, I suppose, a 5th trump. I guess a systemic solution would be a way to show a double fit with slam try over 3♣. The 6th round of bidding is kind of late to show a 3-card fit for opener's 5-card major. (This post is fairly long because it's really a pretty interesting problem. And I sympathize, also having played a multi-purpose 2C/1M with artificial followups.)

What did it do?

6D is a better bid than pass over 3N. If partner has ♦xx and nothing else (i.e. xxx KQxxx xx xxx), then 3N makes if diamonds run, and 6D makes if diamonds run or if hearts are 3-3 and diamonds are not 4-0.

Given they are 20-25, maybe you should teach them Rieneck standard? I would always choose something fairly standard - e.g. maybe they will play against others on BBO; then they can pick up more from their opponents if their system is similar to the one they are using.

I don't think partner can have a doubleton spade. I thought he made a takeout double of 4H! Did I misread the auction??

Ben, a 10 for 5♣ is really off the mark. I would say it's a 3 or 4.