Jinksy

What would be the parameters of the simulation? My guess would be ♥s, since if he had 4, there's a chance opps would have overcalled in the suit, which looks much less likely in ♠s.

Depends on oppo strength. If they're competent I'll try to set up a ♦. If they're BBO randoms who both could have balanced 15 counts, I'll go for a passive ♠.

A limited auction at MPs? I can't see any reason not to look for the most passive lead - a ♦.

What does 'sound' mean? If 'pure', then P will have Kxxxxx(x) in ♥s and little outside it, and probably a shortage elsewhere. If 'HCPy', then they probably have little chance of making this, and we have no particular reason to think we can make 5. In the latter case I X. In the former case I probably pass, since I can't tell who's making what.

IMO it's uniquely awful among NT runouts, even before the introduction of forcing pass. It gives the opps, who already know they probably own the contract, 3 free calls with which to penalise, compete successfully or set up a constructive auction.

Seriously? The guy who can't go two posts without abusing his peers gets upset if they depart from Queen's English?

I'm still waiting for a response to my point - at some point, if the hand the opp is representing is unlikely enough, the odds are better that your opp glitched than that he actually has it. I don't know where the cutoff is, but I'm betting a hand like this is pretty close. Would you still be passing if he'd bid 7? What if you had the QJ of ♦s instead of the J♠?

Playing with a familiar P, I'll venture 3. At the table, I didn't know my P and decided 2 looked safer.

Tx ATxx xx Kxxxx Unfav, teams, you dealer. The bidding unfolds thusly: P 1S / 1N 3S Do you raise?

[hv=pc=n&w=s975h9842dkq7cat9&d=s&v=n&b=15&a=pp1sp1n(6-9ish)p3hp3nppp]133|200[/hv] Pick a lead.

Fwiw, I play a lot of weak NT, and would also pass the N hand. Opposite a weak NT, you need sources of tricks to have a chance of making three, and I don't find flat acey hands tend to provide them. It's all very well looking at the vul and scoring, but you know P will do that too, and drop you in a lot of hopeless games with a random 13-count.

This.

Where's the 'I play strong 1♥, ha!' option? Good for Fantunes and Groovers.

7♠.

Is eagles your student, then?

My main worry with a 2♣ opener is a 2♠ response.

I can't stand opening 2C on 2-suiters, never mind 3-suiters, but I don't see how you can do anything else on this hand. None whatsoever.

I agree with most of this, but I still don't think it changes the probabilities enough to (obviously) outweigh the colossal unlikeliness of the explanation of 'N is making in hand'. Suppose one had a bid that promised a 13-card spade suit. If any player of any skill bid that, you'd hopefully assume that they'd glitched, and react accordingly. While the probability of N having a making hand here is obviously far higher, I don't think it's enough so that I rate it as high enough a priori not to still think 'north glitched' is a better explanation. (ETA - all this is heavily skewed by the fact that it's appeared here, unfortunately, which I'd guess makes it a lot more likely that someone doubled and it didn't work out so well)

What about case c) - they have their bid and it's a decent preempt, eg x x AKQJTxxxx KQ? Then if lots of non-muppets are non-doubling, we get a good score. That seems more likely than N having - x AKQJxxxxx AKQ to me. I agree with the general principle that passing on such auctions is usually right, but we're allowed to use probabilistic reasoning. The a-priori odds against N having a hand that can make in this case are so tiny that I don't think the evidence of his bid is obviously enough to make it likely.

Initially wrote 'pass, wtp?' Now I think double. If they make, we're getting a terrible score anyway, and it's possible P would have bid a distributional game if they'd bid a level or two lower.

You're pretty high to be investigating whether opener bid 3♥ on Kxxxxx.

To be fair, if you allow responder to bid on very weak hands, this isn't inconceivable. I've seen FrancesHinden talk about passing P's reverses in such cases, and since PhantomSac was talking about playing with some Ps that 1C is forcing when NV, I imagine he'd agree.

Maybe the computer likes him, and is dealing him example hands where perfect play avoids the finesse as a learning exercise. If he gives up his account, can I have it?

I'll take what I can get.

Bollocks. Give opener A KJxxxx xxxx AK (not a hand on which he'd show ♠ shortage in my book), and if the queen doesn't drop in 2 rounds, 7♥ is on the ruffing finesse while 7N looks like it needs E to have 5♦s and the ♠Q. Give opener Ax KJxxxx JTx AK, and we can try to ruff out the SQ, then fall back on the D finesse, whereas in 7N we just have to pick one. Give opener Axx KJxxxx xx AK, and we can ruff the third D to see if either opp shows out before deciding which way to play the ♠ finesse. Are you seriously claiming the combined odds of these add up to less than the chance of a first round ruff when, (unless P is 1642), the biggest chance of that is P with 3622, meaning Ss need a mere 6-0 split the wrong way round (approx 0.0035% by my reckoning + Wikipedia. Plus the added chance of ♣s 9-0 or ♦s 7-0, pushing it up to a meaty ~0.0052%, assuming the opps passed throughout NV) By my calculation (before accounting for the possibilities of 2722 and 1642), it's more like 66%. I dunno where this 'recommended 80%' comes from, though. It depends a lot on context, but for most purposes, I'll happily take 66% + the extra chances for 7♥s.