wyman

♠ for me also

lead the heart 10 against however many notrump they end up in, or against 6m lead your stiff and hope for the best if it seems they are missing an ace.

Keep in mind that doubler is not really doubling to increase the penalty. He's doubling for a major suit lead, probably a heart through, since he's seriously unlikely to be void in a side suit on this auction (since he very clearly has short diamonds). And if they make, or make 7, no harm has been done unless we've redirected a killing lead into a fatal one. Yes, it's very clearly a top or bottom deal, as all slams are in this field. The opposite of this was actually part of doubler's argument at the table. "From my side, it looks like your most likely lead is a club, which could be a disaster." Cat out of the bag -- there is no dispute. Both of us agreed with the double. But apparently we disagree with all of you. Interested in thoughts about doubler's reasoning.

MPs, mediocre field. We are silent. 1D-1H; 2D-3N; 5D-6D. Sitting over the 6D bidder, do you dbl with Kxxx / Kxxx / void / T8xxx ? Does your answer change if you're in a good field?

The onus of doubling is on the partner with shortness. South should not double in direct seat, nor should he balance opposite a partner who failed to double even with marked shortness! This one's all north, who has a fairly routine TOX of 3S in my opinion.

Yeah, sorry, I assumed that "takeout" was the preferred nomenclature for a hand with short spades and approximately [number of cards needed to bid <suit> - 1] in each other <suit>. I certainly didn't mean that you had a hand that would make a takeout double of an opening spade bid.

We have shortness in hearts, our long suit is headed by queen-empty, and we have KTx sitting under the club bidder, giving us effectively a flat 7 count. Why on earth would we bid?

MP r/w Did I go overboard opening this 1S instead of 2C? AKQTxx / void / KQ / Axxxx 1S (4H) P (P) ? If you bid 4S, RHO will balance 5H and you're up again.

MPs w/w x / A98xx / KQJ98x / J 1D (1S) 1N (3S) ? Do you do something different at different vul/scoring?

This is a style thing. I play 3S forcing -- could be a big hand with spades or could just be unsure of strain, not wanting to bypass 3N or rule out 5m, for example. Cues for me are supporting clubs. 4S is a hand that wants to play 4S opposite a (slightly better than) minimum partner. This is just one style, though. Other people double with good hands and play 3S NF as above.

My thoughts exactly. 4N should really show exactly this hand imo.

Extras, takeout.

Aside: Passers -- how much more do you need before you'd double? Just curious. I pass, too, but I feel like any of HK, HQ, DK, DA, or SA would be enough that I'd give serious consideration to dbl. Am I way off? [nonexpert trying to calibrate :)]

I double. Tough hand. I can see 4S easily being the winner.

Playing (a flavor of?) WR, we define: 1N - 2D!; 2H - 2S!; 2N! - ... 3C = 6+ clubs, slammish, bad suit [missing (at least?) 2 of the top 3 clubs] ... 3D = 6+ diam, slammish, bad suit ... 3H = 6+ clubs, slammish, good suit ... 3S = 6+ diam, slammish, good suit ... 3N = slammish with 6 solid somewhere [optionally -- I've heard of people just treating this as "good suit"] And from what I gather, the "full" WR also uses 4C/D/H/S to show major suit slam tries H bad / S bad / H good / S good So my question is what anyone who plays a full WR now does with the sequence: 1N - 2(M-1); 2M - 4M since the hand didn't WR.

That's how I play that sequence with any of my regular partners as well (and we have ERKC agreements). edit: in case this was ambiguous, i mean that I'd play 5C as a cue and not voidwood.

No idea what's right, but 3N was my gut reaction with 3H as my second choice (can still bid 3N over 3S). Obviously it could be disastrous. Hopefully they have the agreement to lead a short major if they double, so we'll just be playing for 50s if it's really bad.

I thought I was aggressive and I'm not even considering moving here...

Links broken Tyler

I got a 7875 on that set using those rules.

27643 on yours broze using all resources. Dude you crushed me on the 3rd photo though (the snowy one); I had no idea. I'm interested in whether I just missed a clue or what...

I think this is totally fine btw. I mean everyone should make his own rules for the game, but we should be honest about the tools we used. I think trying to maximize score with no restrictions is still an awesome challenge, for example. I got 14778 on my first shot, no googling and not much "exploring" in the pictures provided, but I had a relatively easy set. Also, street signs really help, and I don't think it's cheating to scroll around the map that the game provides to locate cities that the signs indicate are nearby.

The spade rebid doesn't necessarily show 6 spades. Consider AKxxx xx AQXx xx. Most players would rather have 2S not show 6 than have 2N not show a heart stopper. Of course, you can agree what you want, but I think 2S as a "catch-all," as someone described it above, is quite standard.

haha I think the layout is really horrible also, but that doesn't mean that we can't grab the bits and pieces that are better. I agree though that something that makes old threads easier to search and find would be great. idk if the solution is putting the hand as the title or what, but I'll often look for old threads and take forever to find what I'm looking for.

For me, 1C-3N shows better clubs, and 1C-2N/3C are underbids, so I'm endplayed into either opening 2N or 2C-2N. I don't particularly care which, since this is pretty close to the border. I guess a third option is 2C-3C. If you have a flexible 2C-<suit rebid> style, this may work, but I'd prefer to have more. Honestly I'll probably just open 2N and hope we aren't cold for 6C.