sfi

There's a hand in the match writeup in the latest Bridge World where both sides in the final opened 2H on something like xxx A9xxxx Axx x. Not necessarily saying it's for everyone, but preempts are definitely trending towards the less pure variety. What constitutes an acceptable preempt depends heavily on a number of factors: IMPs vs MPs, Vulnerability, seat, bidding so far, opposition tendencies, partnership philosophy, partnership agreements, opposition agreements, how good our partnership defence is, and state of the match/event. And these are even before you look at your hand. There you have to consider suit honours, suit texture, shape, major suit length, outside honours, defence, lead direction (and who's likely to be on lead), suits not yet bid, and holdings in suits already bid. Given this list, it's pretty hard to come up with good guidelines for all situations. The best thing to do in a serious partnership is to sit down and discuss all of these things to arrive at some sort of a consensus in general approach. For example, A8xxxx - Axxx xxx would be a mandatory opening at this vulnerability in some partnerships but unthinkable in others. I'd be less inclined to open it at IMPs, vulnerable, or second seat, but more likely to overcall with a preempt, especially if partner's a passed hand. Your second hand - KQ10xxx Jxx x xxx - looks to me like a 3S overcall at favourable (but not against all opponents, in all situations, or with all partners), but at unfavourable I may choose 1S. Et cetera... In short, discuss with partner and then play partner for a middle of the road preempt in your style. If partner then does something weird after preempting, they have something unusual and you can try and work it out at that point.

The advantage of the wide range is that the opponents may misjudge the hand. The trade-off is that partner may well get it wrong as well, but often it's the opponents' hand so the percentages are in the preemptor's favour. When I play this sort of a style I really want partner to play me for an average hand and any variation is something I have to adjust for. Otherwise, partner will simply tie themselves in knots trying to work out what to do.

Surely you would bid 6♥ with the HA as well as two of the top three trumps. There's no ambiguity about it because you're past the agreed trump suit. 7♣ looks perfect on this hand.

Indeed they're not. The 'size' of infinities are measured in aleph numbers. All infinite sets of rational numbers (positive integers, primes, fractions, etc.) are of size aleph-null. The set of real numbers is an example of an infinite set of size aleph-one. And so on. Back on topic, North-South deserve each other. It doesn't even seem worth apportioning blame, but it definitely adds up to more than 100%.

This seems like the most critical question that needs to be answered before adjusting. I don't see how knowing partner was thinking of doing something means that bidding 2H is likely to work here.

How about pass? I'll bet they don't play in 1C and I may have a better chance of hearing what I need. Not sure if I'd do this at the table, but it seems worthy of consideration.

On the face of it this statement seems wrong. Otherwise a combined 18 count would expect to give you play for game most of the time. I was going with the simple 40/13 = 3 points/trick calculation, so where does this figure hold?

So the auction starts with partner as dealer: 1C (strong) - (P) - 1D (weak) - (P) 1H - (P) - P - (P) Now RHO bids 1NT and LHO alerts this! The director sorts all this out and talks to the opponents away from the table. He decides he's not convinced they have a firm systemic agreement for bids in this situation and mentions there will be lead restrictions should my LHO obtain the lead. LHO promptly selects a spade which is (a) out of turn and (b) ignoring the lead restrictions. Major penalty card, my partner now forbids a spade lead and we get started. But wait, there's more! LHO now gets in and leads before the director (who is now standing here and trying not to laugh) can remind them of the lead restrictions which still remain. So partner gets to demand a spade lead and we finish the hand without further incident. How did we do? 7 tricks like everyone else who played hearts, but the director complimented my partner later on how carefully she played the hand.

Pass over 2D is indefensible, so East.

In terms of hand evaluation there's no real difference between the major and the minor. A reasonable 5 card suit means the hand is stronger than it would otherwise be, so it's worth adding some value, and a point is probably around the right amount (i.e. the 5th card is worth around 1/3 of a trick). I think the approach you are talking about arises from the idea that opening 1NT with a 5 card major is a compromise option. Therefore if you have a 17 count, most of the time you can upgrade because of the 5 card major and get the best of both worlds by rebidding 2NT. I don't tend to see too many people always upgrading balanced 14 counts with a 5 card major - judgement tends to come in much more on this end of the NT spectrum. Good 17 counts with 5 card minors are often upgraded as well. People are less dogmatic about spelling out the rules relating to that, which may explain the apparent discrepancy.

There's always the option of an insufficient bid to continue the auction...

Declarer doesn't even need to cash the DA to lose 3 tricks. SA, SK, C9 pitching a small spade means that declarer will have to give up a diamond trick as well as the heart and club. Law 70A requires the director to resolve any doubtful points against the claimer. Declarer did not state an order in which these good tricks would be cashed, and there's nothing abnormal about cashing the DA or switching to clubs after cashing two spades. As a result, Law 70D points to a result of -1. The "logical conclusion" that declarer will not cash the diamond ace, will play the tricks in an unstated order when all tricks are high, or will hold onto a particular meaningless small card all appear to violate this requirement.

The wording looks pretty clear. A 1+ club opener is red unless always strong (blue) or something else makes the system yellow. But it's not a HUM under section 2.2 of the WBF regs. Edit: Looks like the note quoted above would make the system green. I agree with Cthulhu D - that seems pretty strange. Around here, it's fairly common for top players to play 1C (and sometimes 1D as well) as balanced or natural. That looks to be different than simply "short club" and those systems are routinely classified as red in Australia. 2+ club, when the only time you would have 2 clubs is 4=4=3=2, is specifically defined as "natural" and can be an agreement in a green system.

Short clubs don't meet the WBF (or the ABF) definitions for HUM. They might make the system red, but not yellow. Additionally, the event regulations prohibited yellow systems in the playoffs altogether. I presume that was to more closely mirror the Bermuda Bowl regulations, but not sure. There were lots of short club with transfer responses systems though.

I found some actual numbers. In the 2012 trials, there were 25 pairs in the open field. 2 pairs were playing brown sticker 2-level openings and another 10 were playing 2D to show weak with one of the majors. My guess was a bit high on this limited data.

They're probably actually less common with the pairs who play in the national trials. I would guess that about 1/4 of the pairs in a national event would be playing some brown sticker convention, but maybe 10-15% in our trial events. On the other hand, I think all three opponents we played tonight at the club had brown sticker conventions.

I didn't say it was a good idea - just that not all psyches are necessarily illegal.

Calling 3NT cold is a very strong statement. On any lead but a spade, South will be forced to guess the location of the diamond honours and is likely to get it wrong given the auction. 2C or 3C by North are reasonable alternatives (and I'd probably bid 2C at the table), but neither is clear cut. The damage looks to have been done by the 1S opening - I'd expect other tables to preempt and endplay N-S into bidding 3NT. The preempt would then help declarer to get the diamonds right as well. This hand is IMO one of the big win areas for strong club openings. You can open these good distributional hands at the one level without partner going too crazy, and the opponents frequently misjudge. In short - unlucky.

Anyone running a book at what flavour of masterpoints the ACBL will introduce next? It seems to be one a decade or so, and something to do what Platinum points used to do is surely an option.

It's not as black and white as you suggest. Barmar provides one example, but how about something more outrageous: A 19 point hand with 7 spades opens 4H. Any reason to suggest that this is suggested by the UI that partner does not have an opening hand?

Some problem. The fact that partner has to pass is authorised information, but you're not entitled to know that partner has a hand that could not open the bidding. Depending on the psyche and your hand, there could be an argument that you used the UI in your decision.

I had a partner do this once, but it was at the 5 level and he was 1-5 in my suits. So all in all the bots are well ahead.

I think overcalling 4S with the South hand is more dangerous than with the East hand, and I may well choose to defend 4H. Since it's balanced, you need much more from partner to make the contract, and your defence means that 4H is less likely to make. As an example, if you swap the South-East hands -1100 would seem like a triumph. East's distribution means that your upside is pretty good if you find any sort of a fit.

Pass would simply not have occurred to me at the table, so I asked my notoriously conservative partner what he would do. He bid 4S without hesitation and considered pass an error. Maybe it's something in the Australian air.

I play something like this in one regular partnership, but we also use 2C as an invitational raise of the major. In your first hand, I would bid 2NT first with the expectation of bidding 4H later. If it were slightly weaker, we would simply jump to 4H on this hand to show an invitational spade raise with 4H as well, but it would be reasonable to define this as a minimum balanced GF hand and bid that here. That way, you could show a slam try by going through 2NT first and then either 4H or cuebidding on the next round depending on strength. The good news is that partner can't really stuff up your plan that badly by bidding 3H, because you can now cuebid without fear of being misunderstood. That frees up 3H to show clubs and hearts as in your second example. You could even define 3S as a splinter and show the hand quite well on the second round.