wyman

Wow, that seems far superior.

So for you, Clee, over 3N, 4C is a diamond Q?

1C-2C for me, whether reverse Flannery-ing or not (but I do, so I feel way better about it).

What's opener got in each case? 1D (P) 1H (2S) 3N 1D (P) 1H (2S) 2N

Poty for gratuitous use of the phrase "bag of spanners" and comparison of dbl and breaking wind.

"Generally" still does not bother me. Anyone want to do a rough calculation of how many 14+ to 17- hands are 4333, 4432, 5332, and 6322 and then how many 4x1 with a singleton A/K? I can't imagine that we're looking at a very high percentage of my 1N openers, so I'd say that generally my 1N openers have no singleton, no void, and no more than 2 doubletons. I can imagine interpretations of that language that differ from my own, however.

Now I'm confused by all this. Someone asked about methods in the auction 1D-2C. No one is lying about shape if your agreement is what I described above. All hands with 5+ diamonds rebid 2D. All hands without 5+ diamonds don't. With a 4cM, you bid it. Without, you rebid 2N. Since 2C is GF [perhaps this is where we diverge?], you needn't promise extra strength by bidding 2M. Does this clear up whatever confusion you had with my post? I'm not lying about a 5th diamond, nor am I lying about 4cM.

Close but still easy double. You're on the border, but your shape is great, H:AJTx is really nice, and you suspect your DK is working.

On the plus side, I've now learned the word "skullduggery."

We are certainly playing in spades. The question is 3 or 4, as fromage points out, since partner should not have a gigantic hand for his 2S call. And if he does, we'll hear about it later anyway. In favor of 3S: * Our club J is overvalued at 1 HCP * Two more of our 9 points are in hearts, their suit. * Lefty has the heart cards sitting behind us. * Remember that we expect partner to have 12-15, we have 9, and LHO has at most around 9. That means we expect righty has about 5-10. Since righty didn't raise, he is likely to have 1 or 2 hearts. If he only has 1, we might be facing the ace of hearts and a ruff for 2 quick losers. In favor of 4S: * We have 4 trumps * We have shortness in a side suit (clubs) * We have strong intermediate hearts (so even if they cash the ace and give a heart ruff, that might be promoting winners for us in the heart suit). * If LHO's cards are in hearts, he probably doesn't have the king of diamonds, and that makes our AQ look really good (either it's over RHO's king or it combines with partner's K). * In the unlikely event that LHO's high cards are not in hearts, partner is likely to have those missing heart high cards, which strengthens our holding in the suit. * Partner will have an easier time playing the hand than usual. If the opponents can't beat us right away, partner will have really good information about the opponents' shape and their high cards, since we've seen LHO bid 2H! [And especially since we expect the lead to be a heart, we can expect to get a lot of info about which high cards are where at trick 1!] Also, there may be a consideration if you are playing matchpoints or IMPs. At IMPs, I think you have to bid 4S; it pays to bid games more aggressively, especially vulnerable! At MPs, you only want to be in game if it's making more than 50% of the time. I think this is really close. I'd bid 4S, but I wouldn't object if partner "took the low road" and only bid 3. Hope this is helpful.

wtg partner for masterminding. jfc... the result is meaningless since partner's hand is not in his range.

Scheduling matches with 8-man teams proved to be near impossible.

I never saw this shape as part of that BBO counting game. http://i.imgur.com/FT3y4L2.png

...or refreshing. The place would really suck if no one learned anything.

Thanks for the perspective; that's useful. The point about the HQ is well-taken. And also sometimes partner shows up with Hx(x) of clubs.

In a bad club field, I'd expect 6S to be the most common contract. I'm not saying they are in the wrong spot, but IME club fields never bid grands (unless there are 13 obvious tricks, and even then...), and this kind of hand (slam values, all KC + SQ) looks like one they'll bid. If I need a swing, I'm bidding anything but 6S, and it's not common that 6N>7S here, so I'd probably bid 7 but I can see passing 5 and playing for everything to be wrong. If I had another board(s) against them, I'd do that, since if 5 is right, they are going to be incredibly tilted next hand.

I don't have a way to drop in 4m, so I'd probably pass. But if I were going to bid on this hand, i'd totally operate. 3C puppet stayman, then 3N.

I'm a 3H bidder just on bean-counting, but I'm conscious of the fact that my hand is effectively xx / xxxxx / Kxx / xxx. I'm not confident that I'm right, but everything else just seems wrong :-/

3♠ seems pretty clear to me as well.

The suits are chunky and I have both majors. I'm a bidder (1D).

We are everywhere.

On the other hand, you can just make 2N unlimited if 2D is positive, so kokish is somewhat less useful. edit: note that I'm not saying Kokish isn't useful combined with a positive 2D, just that if you're playing an ambiguous 2D, it's MORE useful. Of course that doesn't mean that overall it's not better to play a positive 2D and the less useful kokish -- just that kokish adds less in this case.

I would just bid 4H with that hand, even if you swapped my minors and partner showed H+C. There's no real bust bid, but fast arrival applies.

So my initial reaction on this hand was to make a 2N LR+ (though decidedly not if we're playing straight up J2N). But some accomplished players made it seem like this was a 2D wtp. Agree that all bids are flawed, but 2D just doesn't feel right to me, so I wanted to hear from the crew here. Just trying to tune my instincts a bit.

So are you a 2D bidder Timo?