jjbrr

I agree with this. Some hands just look right for bidding it, so I guess one's preferred style comes with experience. This entirely. Don't look for hands where you should overcall 4-card suits. When you get one, it will be pretty obvious that you need to bid but you don't have the perfect hand for it (and do not think i mean balanced opening hands unsuitable for double. i mean generally unbalanced but not always, generally concentrated values in the suit but not always, and most often a vulnerability that makes the bid not too dangerous). A lot of it is very situational, eg who the opponents are, what the state of the event is, what you hope to accomplish, etc. A litmus test i sometimes use is "how will i feel if partner makes a weak jump raise in this suit? What if he raises to 4?"

this thread needs more love

1♥ 2♣ 2♥ 2NT 3♣ 4NT p

posting in epic thread

i think people are using "wtp" much too liberally. if you cant see the problem, well, i dont know what to tell you except that there is, in fact, clearly a problem presented in the original post. i would pass with this hand. i suppose im much sounder second seat vulnerable at imps than many, though. +1 to everything jdonn et al said.

pirate part 2? http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/9833/masterpieceimo.jpg

ya :) its too bad. its a lot of fun when 10 people all work on it at once. the first one we had was pretty darn good imo. too bad we didnt save it.

Let's draw together!. Show off your skills :P Give it a second to load everyone's work. And, actually, i just realized it automatically resets itself to a clear canvas every once in a while. so keep updating with new stuff if you'd like

That article is definitely a tl;dr. I guess if I could be pressed to read the whole thing, I might understand it better, but from just skimming that whole system is way too confusing. I'd have to relearn bridge just to figure out how the scoring works and what strategy to employ. Sometimes I get 40 for making 1NT, sometimes I get 90, and sometimes I make game!? WHAT? Try explaining that to beginners. We aren't all as smart as you are kfay :P Also, shoutout to aclayton. Made the front page, front center obv. Her father must be proud. Edit: Am I right that functionally you'd need like 8 completely different systems to cover all the possible scenarios where it can be beneficial to stay as low as possible, but the opponents know that you know that you need to stay low and thus they have a system devised to push you higher. And then there are the times where you need to stay low and the opponents can benefit from staying low also, so his example about what to do in 4th chair is unrealistic, because the opponents know that they can make game by bidding a low contract so obv they would try to buy it cheaply. But if you know that they're bidding light, you have to be extra aggressive, because their cheap contract can be very lucrative to them. So even though you want to stay low, you actually have to bid higher because you know the opponents are stretching in the hopes that you think they have more than they have so that they can buy the contract cheaply. So sometimes you have to employ a strategy where you purposely don't stretch because you know the opponents will stretch and when they do you can double them for penalties, unless they utilize the strategy like in the article where they both pass, even though they know a cheap contract will give them a game bonus. headasplode.gif

i couldn't get past this statement.

Happy birthday! Hope it's great.

1♠ nat F1 1NT 0-5HCP, no 4 card support, 0-4 if 3 card support 2♣ 5-7 HCP 0-2 in M 2♦ 5-7 HCP 3M 2M 0-4HCP 4+M 3M 5-7 4+M 2N Strongest raise (max+shortness usually) 4+M after 1♣ 1♦ 1M 2♣, play 2♦ art looking for a landing spot

normalcy? well i don't really know what that means. GO PALIN WOOOOO!

business as usual?

Jdonn: Easy explanation Spoiler: (Hidden)

It wasn't spicy. It was like normal alfredo. It just happened to have some sausage in it. And the dairy in the sauce neutralized any remaining spice anyway. I think I did well tbh. Two thumbs way up on the Beef Bourguignon suggestion. I had planned to christen the crockpot with Italian beef served with crusty french bread. I likely will make a Bourguignon after that. Edit: Er? Be patient with me. Would alfredo be considered a "heavy cream sauce" which can handle a fuller-bodied wine like a cab or a shiraz? So perhaps I was completely backwards in what I was supposed to be looking for? Ie, from wiki, most fish dishes or something like salad would have many subtle flavors and are best suited to light wines, unless that fish is served with a heavy cream sauce in which case it can stand up to a heavier wine. So take spice out of the equation, and where would that leave me?

Bump. Bought a bottle of cab, a bottle of merlot, and a bottle of pinot noir from the store yesterday. All of them ~$10, and I didn't really know what to look for, but that's not important. fwiw i avoided anything with a colorful label or the name of an animal in the brand, as per advice on a different forum. I think I was not unsuccessful in buying some stuff I'll enjoy, though I was hoping to find a chianti but didn't want to spend all night in the wine store, so I abandoned that goal. I had planned to make fettucine alfredo with spicy italian sausage and brocolli for dinner, but didnt want to buy a white to go with it. I concluded the pinot would go best with this particular meal. The impression I've gotten from some research is that cabs go particularly well with meals with very strong flavors, and the merlot would go best with something a bit lighter but still heavier than pasta. I'm making a conscious effort to try to identify the various flavors and smells provided by the wine, but I wonder if I just don't know what to look for, or if I need more guidance in identifying different notes, or if my nose/palate just isn't refined enough yet. Sorry the progress has been slow. I've been planning to do a sort of wine tasting/double blind taste test of a bunch of wines with friends. The idea is everyone brings a bottle of whatever they like <$20 and we taste and discuss and go through all of them before we pick our favorites and decide which one is the best value and so forth. I think this will be a great starting point for comparing/contrasting flavors and determining what our overall preferences are. It also sounds like a heckuva lot of fun. Hopefully I can do this in the next couple of weekends since I'm finally starting to settle in. Stay tuned for updates. (Off topic. Bought myself a crockpot. Looking for baller recipes for stuff I can make Sunday nights and keep dining on throughout the week. Preferably something that goes particularly well with a cab or merlot :) ) One final observation from a newb. As a very, very general statement, I've noticed 2001 and 2002 wines are some of the more expensive selections on wine lists. Were 2001 and 2002 particularly good years in general, or is that a good amount of aging for a wine to be consumed around now, or is it too complicated to nail it to just one or two factors, or am I just completely mistaken and '01/'02 were undeniably terrible years all around? Edit: Reread some of the early posts in this thread. I have to give kenberg credit for the advice of avoiding animals in the label. I also read it somewhere else, but given those two sources it must be fairly reliable. Thanks, Ken. Appreciate all the advice from everyone else as well.

There aren't a whole lot of "rules of thumb" in bridge. You can't use words like "always" and "never" when describing bridge actions. The reason I would game try on the first is exactly what you said. The 6th trump is very valuable coupled with a singleton. If I only 5 trumps and a singleton I probably wouldn't invite because there's too much risk I have to shorten myself if they keep leading my short suit. Also, the KQ together are a nice couple of cards. But yes, give a little extra value to the extra trump length and you can certainly add the distribution points for the shortness. I don't know what game tries you play, but if you play natural, then I think I would bid 3♥. If you play short suit game tries, do that. I think if partner doesn't have club wastage, game opposite 7-10 will be pretty decent a good amount of the time. Admittedly Jxx is a weakness to your hand, but maybe partner can help you out. On the second one you've correctly identified that you don't really have any remarkable features about your hand that suggest you should upgrade it to an invite. The Jx and xx aren't very attractive, and you have weak-ish trumps. Nothing really to see here; pass.

yes, no

i passed hoping partner might reopen sometimes. false?

2♣ all day

Whenever partner is missing the ♥A you can be in serious trouble (they lead a spade and hold up from ♥Axxx). Thanks, I'm aware. But sometimes partner has a stiff ♦ or ♣, the ♦Q, or the ♣K to give me extra chances. It's very clear that 2533, 3523, 3532 hands without the ♥A are unsafe, but partner sometimes doesn't only have queens in his hand!

The range of S hands that make the 5 level totally unsafe is very small. And it's not clear all of them would even bid 4♥, i think.

xx AQJxx xxxx xx is decent for grand, but dont really see much reason to bid anything other than 5♥. Take the ♥J away and "good slam" becomes more debatable, but certainly playable. Edit: But I guess partner would double with 2542 with bad hearts. forgive me.

North should bid again after 4♥. Edit: While he certainly could have opened 1♦, I think many people would open 2N. Having opened 2N and hearing partner come in with 4♥, this hand is no longer anywhere near the 20-21 balanced hand he promised. It's closer to worth like 26 given the stiff ace in the enemy suit and AKJxx outside with Hxx in trumps. I think bidding 4♠ is clear. And I'm not sure I would sign off if partner bids 5♥, though I guess it's probably right. He won't bid 5♥ with his actual hand of course, so the problem then is finding the grand. The point is North's hand couldn't possibly be any better and passing is pretty bad.