lmilne

That way of thinking is pretty new to me Rexford, I normally just play it by ear and compare what I hold with other hands I might have. Far from perfect, as you might imagine! Do you have any more information about expected "values" etc?

Wow - there are so many things wrong with this comparison. 1. Gitelman's bid was not a psych. It wasn't a gross misrepresentation of his hand; a mild overbid at best. This sort of thing happens all the time, and there were several ways for it to work (or not work). Piltch's bid, on the other hand, was not only completely bizarre considering what he held, but had to find a specific, very lucky layout to work. 2. The causal link between overcalling 1NT and getting to 3SX (which, incidentally was cold after 5 tricks - how many would be calling Gitelman's bid a psych if it had led to -730?) was very tenous. There were other possible sequences leading to the result, which also depended on many defensive and declarer play decisions. Compare Piltch's bid, which would either work or not, most of the time simply depending on the dummy he got. He bid 6♦, with no information about his partner's hand, and it worked. There is a strong direct link there. 3. Noone would question the ethics of Gitelman, because his track record speaks for itself. On the other hand, Piltch has been disciplined (at least twice, from memory) for ethics violations. So, to sum up, not only is your comparison pretty flawed (as 655321 said), but your presentation of Piltch as a player of which his ethics you "have had occasion to discuss at great length with" simply increases the already fairly strong evidence that he had unauthorised information and abused it.

Partner probably has two high cards for an unfav overcall, and it's not that surprising (after looking at the hand :blink: ) that they are K♠ and a diamond card, most likely the queen. Still, diamond could still cost. Wouldn't lose any sleep over this one.

For a second there, I thought your partner had bid 1S, 4S, 7S all by himself vul against not! Then I realised it was only partial insanity instead of total. Interesting play hand - is this like a non-simultaneous double squeeze or something...

Also, cashing 5 rounds of diamonds is getting pretty close to committing you to the squeeze, for the reason that after you have squandered all your diamond entries, you have to take a club finesse immediately if at all (provided that the finesse isn't safe after cashing a top club, i.e. LHO shows out or something). If you don't take the finesse then, and instead cash a top club, your last entry is the heart, so you have to cash the spade immediately, leaving yourself open to the possibility of taking a losing club hook and having spades cashed against you :blink: You can avoid this problem by only cashing 4 rounds of diamonds and leaving yourself a spade, but for reasons already stated, this seems very much inferior.

Yeah, this was my intended ending. Cash diamonds to allow opps maximum chance of making a mistake (by throwing a revealing club, or throwing a heart from a 4-card holding - this is more likely as you have concealed the heart suit in the bidding), followed by cashing 2 top clubs, going to dummy with a top heart, and using the ♠J as the squeeze card. We pitched a club first and then a spade (spade last to try to encourage an opponent to hold on to spades, instead pitching clubs or hearts). P.S. my favourite type of problem - layout is such that whatever you do works :blink:

also, I'm no mod, but editing a post seems a bit incomplete...maybe deleting a whole couple of pages of this thread, posting a warning to keep things on topic (so long ago! what were we talking about again?), other stuff? people come into this thread to find out about the hand and discussion on that ended a long time ago.

haha, good one fluffy B) also, I never realised there was so much pent-up drama and personal vendettas on BBF until I read this thread. Isn't bridge just a game any more?

oh yeah, forgot to mention that one B) all that previous post was basically mumbo jumbo trying to justify my intuitions that the squeeze is right, because A people suck at discarding, B i often play against people who are less than perfect defenders and finally C squeezes are for the cool kids!

Yeah, I think that's the question that was being asked. How's this for a line? Win ♠, cash 5 rounds of diamonds (pitching a club and a spade), then a club to the ace. Assuming the club queen doesn't drop, and that clubs aren't 5-0; Against good opponents, who have discarded well (no clubs gone), cashing the other top club then playing a heart to dummy for a 4-card squeeze ending. This picks up ♣Qx/Qxx/Qxxx and 4+♥ with LHO, along with JT9 tight of hearts. The alternative, which involves cashing 1 less diamond and then taking a 2nd round club finesse, picks up all the ♣Qxx/Qxxx holdings with RHO where he also has 0-3 hearts (when he has 4+ hearts the squeeze also works). I'm no mathematician, the first line seems better, as it forces opps to pitch (someone could easily pitch from 9xxx of hearts if they weren't awake). I'm not entirely sure what the actual percentages are on those two chances, but they look kind of close (?)

Apart from double being for takeout, our opps are nonvul and we have no trump tricks.

A♣

What are we catching up with?? 2♦, so far no problems.

So does this mean bashing with most 12's opposite a 12-14 1NT opener? I was inviting with these back in the day when I still played weak NT, and I often invite with 12 opposite an 11-14 1NT rebid.

agree with gwnn!

obvious double instead of 1♥! ... wait, agree with nigel_k

natural natural natural (quant) for strong hands with spade support (too good for 4♠) i guess you have to bid 5♠ or something else.

haha, I played 17-20 for a while, weak-tight right? 16-19 seems about right for my slightly less conservative self these days.

Agree jdonn, all this stuff about 'living' somewhere confuses me, why not fish around and find out what partner has instead of insisting upon a strain? The thread title should be a clue...

Last round in a 4-team round robin, in the finals section of a regional teams event, we needed a pretty good score against the team leading to win. Our teammates had a middling set, but thankfully we managed to bring back +1600 from 2Sxx, when partner was sitting with ♠AKQJT on lead... thankfully there were a couple of extra tricks on top of the trumps!

Endplay one time!

If you don't have a bid for strong hands without clear direction after 1♣-(1♦) (or really any strength hands, although the loss is bigger on the strong hands), it's not the system's fault - it's yours. If you have to invent bids, then that's a problem. I (and many others) can simply bid 1♠ on this hand, whether it be a general force, denying a major, or something else. Without this tool available, I wouldn't even consider 3NT to be an option, to be honest. I prefer to put a bunch of hands like this in the X (calling it "negative" might be misleading!), instead of overloading the cue-bid. With the hands which your everyday player would X with (I guess 44 majors hands?) just bid 1♥. cloa513 adequately expressed my opinions about 3NT, so I won't repeat them here, save to say that jumping 3 levels of bidding space with a huge hand and calling 3NT reasonable is crazy, and blaming the opponents for overcalling with a bid that doesn't deprive you of any bidding space is also crazy.

Yeah. Although after 2NT-3♣-3♦-3♠-3NT-4♣-4NT I'd probably still want to pass.

x KQ KQTxx AQTxx (3H)-? vul vs not imps

First instinct - club to ten at trick 2. Hope this loses to the ace, will probably be in good shape then. If it holds - probably not so good, but I have some chances anyway.