Jinksy

For the time being we've decided to go with a Fantunes-strength constructive ♠ & (♥/♣) hand on the theory that it's a constructive bid. That's let us find a few games in testing that we certainly wouldn't have found before, and that many of the room might miss. Up until now we've been having to suck it up and open 5♠-5♥ hands with a normal 2-bid, so this fixes a very awkward gap in our system.

West is to blame for having lost his original 9♣.

Yeah, I don't think 1♠ is wildly unreasonable, and certainly E's actions are far worse. 'Blame' is a confluence of prediction and luck though, and had it gone 1♠ PPP when E had the hand above, I suspect I know who'd have got the most votes in the subsequent ATB. In any case, opposite a passed hand I think there must be a 'right answer' to the question of what to open, even if we don't yet know what it is - you could sim how often game makes opposite hands that wouldn't pass as well as how often it would stop N from finding a bid that would lead to a good sac, then assume that E would never bid slam, so reduce the expectation accordingly, then estimate how often a single-bid auction would lead to a game making on the lead, add the expectation from that. The latter would be hard to do, but I suspect a determined statistician could come up with some plausible heuristics. So - admittedly without high confidence - I would guess that opening 4♠ ultimately has higher expectation here than something more modest.

Both for me, though definitely more for E. As W, I'd prefer to just open 4♠ in this seat, since we want to be in game opposite as little as K Jxxx xxxxx xx, and might make on a favourable lead given a few other non-responding holdings, yet can hardly envision slam. Agree with trevahound about E's pass of 3♠ though. That bid is seeking game at these colours, not preempting (not to mention if W had a minimum opening hand with long ♠s, he should just open two or three ♠s in this seat). If E doesn't have a max* for his pass, he's playing a different game than the one I'm used to. * Plus a point or two.

redacted more derailment

I'm not exactly proud of the side of me Hog brings out, but a) you try remaining civil when he stalks you round the forum leaving acerbic comments targeting virtually every post you write, and b) this one at least is still a discussion about the hand in question, so what's your objection here?

dbl post

P's failure to X for a D lead is about the strongest bit of information you have to choose between the four suits :P

Right, because the top bridge players all agree that third seat is the time to go conservative. I was talking in proportional terms, as you well know. Yes, KTxx (not to mention KT876532) might be able to penalty pass over the suit (but under it? really?), but it requires a) LHO to pass (smoothly) b) RHO to have a reopening double (that had better be clearcut if W's pass wasn't smooth), c) LHO to have such an otherwise suitably defensive hand that he's not better off pushing for 3N at these colours d) them not to be making slam and so on. I doubt good opps could profitably penalise 2D more than one time in 15 on this hand and auction so far. Weaker opps will manage it much less and for bigger loss when they get it wrong. You seem to be backing away from this claim now... Yeah, this right here is an argument for my point. Like I said in another thread, and like Alan Mould writes in his book on preempts and Mike Lawrence writes in The Complete Guide to Passed Hand Bidding, partner as a passed hand is not invited to get involved. Lawrence: 'You have seen that the range for weak two bids is extreme in third seat. I suggest that if you have a decent hand for partner's suit, you just pass.' I guess that's totally different for weak jump overcalls? How does us having potentially good defence mean I'm going to preempt him? I can point to a specific instance of me having explicitly done so. I have never once seen you do the same. There are plenty more where I've posted a question and quietly changed my mind as a result of the responses, so apparently I do listen to some advice. Perhaps I'm just inexplicably obstinate about taking it when it comes with a heap of abuse and scant reasoning? As for your argument by committee, I am not the only one to say <disparaging things about your character>, so I guess it's lucky for both of us that's not how these things are determined.

H for me, but anything could be right.

If that were the reason, a 1♠ bid would help the opponents a lot more, since it takes away one of the three most likely game spots for them (while using up less space).

Huh? Surely on bog-standard agreements RKCB is for last suit bid, if one hasn't been agreed already.

I think we're going to try out Loca first, and maybe switch to SONNET later if it feels like the more descriptive acronym would save hassle in explanations. Thanks Hiram K :)

Maybe, but if P has two ♠ winners and declarer a ♦ (or two), a ♣ singleton would serve as well (and the forcing defence might not work if dummy shows up with something like xxx Axxxx Kx QTx)

I can hardly believe I'm still optimistic enough to ask this, but do you have a reason for this claim? Perhaps one based on - y'know - reason rather than your traditional 'a reely reely good player I once played with told me this and he was awesome and better than anyone you've played with!!11!!'? Advantages: Good enough suit and distribution to not get Xed Favourable vul Takes lots of opps' bidding space Good chance of LHO playing the contract, so it helps P with lead P has passed, so no chance of preempting him Weak enough that opps might have slam Disadvantages: Certain BBO forumers were taught by Obi-Wan Kenobi that they needed an extra D for the bid and find it morally abhorrent without one

This tournament did, IIRC. The 'bad beginner' had played something in the vicinity of 10000 hands, as had the player who psyched in second seat. I suppose misclick and bad bid is plausible, but looking at their hands only, it's hard to think of a better way to reach the slam and deter the danger lead. One hand proves nothing I suppose, but I certainly think they should be placed on a watch list.

Hence 2♦.

If it promises 5-6, a ♣ lead looks tempting. We might get a first round ruff on a good day; if not, hopefully we can manage a ♠ stop from P, a round of ♦s to hold up so I can give him a second round ruff, and then a fourth trick in the wash (apparently that DK that mikeh is intending to collect). Agree with WesleyC - passing 1♣ was weedy. 2♦ for me.

But seriously, I think incentivising people to set their status to beginner or novice would be a good idea. At the moment most people who should rank themselves as one seem to put themselves down as 'intermediate' just so they can get partners.

The fundamental inconsistency with this idea is that all bridge players are far superior to their partners ;)

1C P* P X / P 1N * This being partner. Opposite a direct X I'd expect something like 8-10 for a 1N bid, so on the borrowed King principle this should theoretically be 11-13 (and since P would surely balance on a 4441 8-count, I wouldn't feel happy about jumping to 2N with a hand in that range). But having to limp quietly into your longest side suit with a balanced 10 count (esp one with a decent stop) feels pretty nasty. Also, P's expected range be different after this auction: 1S P P X / P 1N ?

Nice :) I don't think it quite displaces SONNET as my current favourite, but vies with Imprecision for my second pick...

I saw 'nige1' as the most recent respondent, and immediately envisaged a post like 'SONNET = 9, Air Force 1 = 7, Blunderbuss = 6' or similar :P

Why, because you want P to bid game with Axxx Kxx Jxxx Kx? Open 1♠ if you're worried about missing game with that hand, and play Drury. I don't agree, in expectation. It has zero defence - they almost certainly have a game and quite likely a slam available, but it has quite a lot of offensive potential. The important thing is including P's hand in the calculation - he's very unlikely to show up with 3.4 defensive tricks to combine with your 0.3ish of one, but can quite plausibly show up with 3-5 or even 6Ss. As long as he doesn't go raising you on weak balanced hands with 3-4 card support (which is prob bad bridge even if you don't open hands like this - even on the hand in gave earlier in this post, I'd expect P to pass, and this is one of the few occasions where I think passing then competing is a good strategy), that means for both opps your partnership's ♠ expectation is still 7-8 cards (unless they happen to have 5 or 6 of their own. Doesn't happen much, or guarantee they'll manage to penalise you profitably when they do). Also ODR isn't as big a factor as for other preempts. Whereas with a first or second seat preempt you're suggesting to P the possibility of a high level sac (so having a lot of outside losers can go wrong whenever he raises you), with a third-seat preempt you're not inviting P to get involved. On this hand, since it's very rare either that 2♠ will get passed out or that P will raise you, your main goal is just to eat their bidding space without the risk (or at least without much of it) that your partnership will end up overcompeting as a result.

Yeah, I like that. I think 'expansive' describes the 2-bids pretty well though, homophones notwithstanding. Let me know if you think of any specific alternatives.