bd71

OK, 2nd part of the question... Bidding goes 1H-1N-2H. Now what do you bid?

[hv=d=n&v=n&s=sqxxhajdaxxxcjtxx]133|100|Scoring: MP Playing 2/1 with first-time partner in typical club game. Had no discussion on opening style (i.e. how often with 12, do we use Rule of 20, etc.). 1H-(P) to you Is this worth a 2/1 bid? If no, does your answer change at IMPS?[/hv]

As a prelude to asking questions about pre-empting style, I once asked "how long have you and your partner played together", hoping to establish the credibility of the subsequent answers. Opponent told me that was an inappropriate question, so I simply moved on to ask the style-related question (I believe it was frequency/likelihood with which 3C might be opened with 6). Was opponent right, or are you allowed to ask how long/frequently they play together to assess the likely quality of other answers?

ACBL. I don't have hands, but they're not relevant. Club game with 4 intermediate-ish players at the table. We are defending against 4 hearts. Our trumps are drawn early in 3 rounds, and in the few tricks played after that it seems that both my partner and I lost our minds. On a trick where I lead the AD and dummy/partner follow with diamonds, declarer discards a spade. Both my partner and I assume he has ruffed it as we credit him with the trick and let him lead to the next trick. (In retrospect, I'm not sure if he thinks he's ruffed it too, or if he's pulling a fast one). With 4 cards left, he claims by stating he is going to cash a winner in dummy (he did have one), dropping a losing spade in his hand, and then he has only trump left (having started with 6). He shows his 4 cards...the spade and 3 hearts. Ostensibly making 4. As we are all gathering up our cards, and partner is writing the score, I am starting to realize what happened. By the time I put it together and say something, cards are all back in the board. (Please limit the remonstrations that I shouldn't have gathered my cards up...so noted.) When asked what he played on the AD trick, declarer said he didn't recall but thought he had ruffed it. We point out that with six trumps, there weren't enough to draw 3 rounds early, ruff a diamond trick, AND have 3 remaining at the end for his claim. Director is called at this point, responded to by a pseudo-assistant director (this being a somewhat informal club). Because we are late for the next round we are told that we should settle it after the entire match. At the end of the match, lead director/club owner says she can't do anything about it then, that it had to be settled right after the hand. Questions: 1. What should have happened when director was first called? Should we get credit for down one, or because we missed our opportunities to correct things when there was solid evidence of what happened (e.g. first right after the trick in question, and second before cards were gathered) are we stuck with the result of them making 4? 2. Was the lead director right that she couldn't do anything about it at the end of the match?

I was headed in this direction too...but is West really done if he discards a club at the key 7-card ending you note? If he throws a club, when you come to hand in spades, you can take your 4 clubs but then I think you are left with a low losing spade.

[hv=d=n&v=n&s=sktxhtxxdakqjtxxc]133|100|Scoring: MP First-time intermediate partner, playing very basic Standard American with standard Blackwood. Specifcally agreed NOT to play splinters. No opposition bidding. 1S-2D 2H-4S 4N-5D 5S Feel free to comment on bidding to this point, but it is what it is...should you bump it up to 6S? Does your answer change with vulnerability and scoring?[/hv]

If only... Didn't specify, but it was a pickup partner ("let's play your card, pd"), did NOT have agreement to use four-way transfers, and 1430 and Gerber were agreements on ace-asks.

[hv=d=w&v=e&s=saqthkqdaq97642c5]133|100|Scoring: IMP (P) 1N* (P) ??? *15-17 [/hv] Playing in a BBO ACBL pairs tourney. If you ask aces, partner has two. What then? If you ask kings, partner has two. What then? My real question is whether it's hopelessly optimistic to bid 7N after hearing about the aces & kings. My calculus was something along the lines of: (1) 2/3 chance that pd has KD and 7N should then be in the bag except for 4-0 diamonds offside, (2) even if he doesn't have KD there's a good chance 7N comes home with KD onside, (3) even if KD offside maybe partner has long-suit source of tricks. So I guessed it was an 80%-plus grand and bid it. As you might imagine by my raising the issue, things didn't work out even after partner held 18 points... http://online.bridgebase.com/myhands/hands...3&username=bd71 So was this a good percentage bid that just didn't work out, or is there a flaw in my logic?

Yes, 3S is a limit raise.

[hv=d=e&v=e&s=sa7532haqt6dckq43]133|100|Scoring: MP 1S-3S ??? Playing generally standard methods...a non-spade bid here would show first or second round control. [/hv] This hand is from the February 2007 "Bidding Box" article in the ACBL Bulletin (for those not familiar, two typically-expert pairs bid a set of 8 intentionally-difficult hands). I'm not very satisfied with the approach the two pairs took, and wanted to get other opinions (you can look it up, but I will follow-up with their answers after we get some responses).

No. I mean that EITHER of the two pairs had game on 11 of 24. This was a team match so each of the 11 games/slams was available to our team once...but only about half were available to my partner and I. Clearly, if our PAIR had 11 of 24 games, that would be unusual. The question is whether it's unusual for that few to be available to anyone.

What are rough percentages of hands on which one pair has either a legitimate game or a slam available to them? We had a 24-board team match over the weekend where by our best calculations, there were 10 games and 1 slam available (plus/minus probably one game). These numbers seem low to us. Has anyone ever done more rigorous calculations here...perhaps using BBO hands as a database?

So our C-level team (basically, intermediate players in the US) is playing in a multi-month teams competition where you play one match per month for 4 months. Each match is 24 boards with IMP scoring converted to Victory Points on 30-point scale. Going into our last match, our team is in first and can only lose to the team we play, and only if they get 25 Victory Points...i.e. if they beat us by 32 or more IMPs. Is this a big enough lead to make significant changes to our approach or strategy? We don't really know anything yet about the other team (system, aggressive/conservative, etc.) so we can't really try to replicate what we think they would do. Should we be more conservative overall? Should we still bid games aggressively but only bid fairly certain slams? Any advice is appreciated...

This was my partner's response to the question on why he didn't bid 1S. Question...is it really an "oldfashioned style" that overcalls are limited to 15? I thought that was pretty standard. I still think 1S is the better bid after downgrading a point or so for 2 unsupported queens, but didn't think Double was as bad a bid as Kenrexford did.

So my work and family situations limits the amount of face-to-face bridge I can play to about 10-15% of my hands. As I incrementally progress and learn to focus on more aspects of counting the hand (i.e. declarer tricks when on defense, distribution of side suits, point count of unseen hands, etc.), I find that I do much better online than in-person. Presumably the additional stimuli of being at the club or tourney disrupts my concentration. Has anybody else dealt with this problem, and have advice for how to handle it?

Well, for what it's worth on this hand partner did have the almost perfect hand. [hv=s=sqxxxhaqxxdkqxcax]133|100|[/hv] Our bidding in the end was 1C-(1D)-X-4S-4N-5H-6S. LHO doubled, but RHO had JTxx of spades. Don't understand LHO double, but oh well. Down one when 6N is cold...sadness.

[hv=d=s&v=n&s=sakxxhxdxckqxxxxx]133|100|Scoring: MP 1C (1D) X (P) ??[/hv]

[hv=d=e&v=e&n=sakqtxhqtdqjtcqxx&s=sxxxhk9xxxdaxxxxc]133|200|Scoring: MP Q1: North's bid after... (P) P (1C) ?? Q2: South's bid after... (P) P (1C) X (P) ?? Q3: Does best auction get you to best game of 4S? What is it? [/hv]

[hv=d=e&v=b&s=sk94ha85d87caq543]133|100|Scoring: MP P-1C-(1D)-X P-???[/hv]

So that's exactly where I was, two months ago, before this situation came up to burn me, which led to further discussion with my partner. I now know that in SAYC and 2/1, 1S is not forcing (although I still instinctively FEEL that it is), but it's not clear to me WHY it should be non-forcing. It seems to me that BOTH of the following conditions would need to be true on a hand for a non-forcing 1S to leave you in the best place, and thus for the non-forcing to be the right approach: Condition 1. Our combined point holdings have to be pretty minimum. This can happen but seems somewhat rare since we've shown 16-17 minimum (say a rule of 20 opener, and a think 5-point response), and neither opponent has spoken. Condition 2. EITHER (a) Opponents would NOT balance after 1S is passed (seems like this would be very rare), OR (bb) Opponents would balance and we would NOT want to compete to the two level (so hand would have to be a total misfit) Seems like Conditions 1 and 2 are going to be rare individually, and combined even rarer. So doesn't seem like you gain a lot by making 1S non-forcing, and like gnasher said you gain some flexibility to describe your hand at a low level if you define it as forcing.

Played recently in a Mitchell movement with 8 tables where we played 4 boards per round for 6 rounds. Playing 4 bds/round rather than 3 made things move much faster, and we finished the 24 boards in 3 hours flat, a good 30 minutes shorter than the 3 boards/8-round sessions I recall at this club. Frankly, it didn't feel like we should have been done. My question...given that 4 boards per round seems to be fast enough to finish 4x7 in roughly the same time period it takes to do 3x8, is there a simple movement option where directors can plan from the start to play 7 rounds/28 boards with 8 tables? I asked this and was told that playing a 7th round in this movement would have caused some pairs to repeat boards. But I sensed that there was either uncertainty or prevarication in the response. So did I get the right answer? If it matters, EW pairs skipped a table in the middle of the session.

Not sure I get this...STOPPER does NOT equal WINNER, right?

[hv=d=n&v=n&s=sxxhakqtxxxdxxcxx]133|100|Scoring: MP 1S-(2D)*-2H-P* 2N-(P)-??? *Both opponent bids with confidence and zero pause or apparent problem[/hv] Is it completely crazy to bid 3N instead of 4H here? I did, with the following thoughts: 1. The opponents bidding mannerism suggested to me that almost all of the outstanding points were with RHO 2. With probably 24-25 points, seems like just choosing game with best possible chance to make (rather than thinking about overtricks) makes sense. 3. I have 6 losers in hearts and partner had to cover 3 of them in 4H vs. merely needing 2 winners at 3N (assuming the hearts run) 4. NT puts the stronger opponent hand on lead 5. If partners points are in tenaces, opponent strength lies over them. If partners points are top cards, seems like 2 outside tricks and the NT game should be in the bag. Anyway, it worked on this hand (3N making 4, top board), but the question is whether there's a case that 3N is the best long-run percentage action. If you think 4H is the better bid, is your answer the same if it's IMPs?

[hv=d=e&v=n&s=sajxxhaqjtxxxdxcx]133|100|Scoring: IMP RHO opens a 15-17 1N. Your agreed interference method is DONT. What's your move? If you happen to double (showing one-suited hand), LHO bids 3N after a 30-second pause, and it's passed back to you. What now? [/hv]

[hv=d=e&v=n&s=shxdaqtxxxcakqxxx]133|100|Scoring: MP RHO opens 1C (better minor). Your agreement with partner is that Unusual NT is two lowest unbid suits. What should be the plan?[/hv] If you pass or bid 1D, LHO bids 2S (weak) and it's passed back around to you. What then?