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[wyman]

I never resorted to calling anybody names because it's childish, but I'm happy to hear people variously calling me "jackass" and "clown" for having a well-reasoned argument and sticking to it.

 

Actually, I called you a jackass for calling JLall's action ludicrous with no argument at all (your claim that I ignored the other part of your post is silly, since that had to do with your call after (1H) P (P) X

(P) ?

not about the overcall)

and for subsequently getting indignant about it.

 

And I called you a clown for putting quotes around Justin's "credentials" and for claiming that you know you're right when several experts here disagree.

 

I stand by both claims.

[HighLow21]

HighLow

 

....and you need to tone down your attitude.

MikeH, I list you as one of the people above whose opinions I very much respect. Do you not know what caused me to be so angry?

 

It is because MULTIPLE PEOPLE have reverted to immature, ad hominem attacks against me, irrespective of (1) their actual knowledge of me, (2) the quality of my argument, (3) what other people are actually saying.

 

Please reread all this. *I* am the one being attacked for having an opinion and voicing it strongly. Are other entitled to an opinion? Absolutely. But attack my argument on its merits, not me; and stop, for the love of God, talking about how wonderful these pithy, vapid one-liners from 'the anointed one' are. They are not insightful to me in the least, and in some cases they fly in the face of opinions expressed by multiple-time World Champions in print.

 

-Tate

[HighLow21]

Actually, I called you a jackass for calling JLall's action ludicrous with no argument at all (your claim that I ignored the other part of your post is silly, since that had to do with your call after (1H) P (P) X

(P) ?

not about the overcall)

and for subsequently getting indignant about it.

 

And I called you a clown for putting quotes around Justin's "credentials" and for claiming that you know you're right when several experts here disagree.

 

I stand by both claims.

 

JLall said he wouldn't overcall. Reread his argument, for the love of God.

 

Besides, an overcall in this position is, in my opinion, ludicrous, and if you need me to explain why, even though I've done so several times, I'd be happy to do so again.

 

And in terms of "credentials" --> I stand by my scare quotes. Feel free to ask me why. I've explained why I've used them several times.

[Phil]

JLall said he wouldn't overcall. Reread his argument, for the love of God.

 

No, he said not overcalling was OK but that he would overcall:

 

I would overcall but obv 3 little spades and a bad suit and no hand vulnerable are reasonable reasons not to :P

 

I think its time for a walk around the block for you. Go get a sandwich or something.

[wyman]

JLall said he wouldn't overcall. Reread his argument, for the love of God.

 

I would overcall

 

Ah, I see what you mean...

[HighLow21]

No, he said not overcalling was OK but that he would overcall:

 

 

 

I think its time for a walk around the block for you. Go get a sandwich or something.

 

This is exactly my point: it could be read as "I would overcall, BUT..." meaning, he wouldn't overcall. Or he would. Either way, to anyone who isn't playing in the Bermuda Bowl, overcalling on this hand seems nutso to me. And it's another example of an ambiguous, unhelpful post.

[wyman]

This is exactly my point: it could be read as "I would overcall, BUT..." meaning, he wouldn't overcall. Or he would. Either way, to anyone who isn't playing in the Bermuda Bowl, overcalling on this hand seems nutso to me. And it's another example of an ambiguous, unhelpful post.

 

A word of advice:

 

there is a huge difference between

 

<action> is ludicrous!

and

<action> seems nutso to me.

 

The former is a judgment of an action. It is absolute. It implies something about the person that makes the action.

The latter strongly states your opinion about the hand but is neither authoritative nor judgmental, and it suggests a willingness to hear another side.

 

"seems nutso to me" is actually a much friendlier way to disagree than saying "is ludicrous" (though, especially when I'm outwardly disagreeing with seriously WC players, I'd tone it down even more).

[mikeh]

MikeH, I list you as one of the people above whose opinions I very much respect. Do you not know what caused me to be so angry?

 

It is because MULTIPLE PEOPLE have reverted to immature, ad hominem attacks against me, irrespective of (1) their actual knowledge of me, (2) the quality of my argument, (3) what other people are actually saying.

 

Please reread all this. *I* am the one being attacked for having an opinion and voicing it strongly. Are other entitled to an opinion? Absolutely. But attack my argument on its merits, not me; and stop, for the love of God, talking about how wonderful these pithy, vapid one-liners from 'the anointed one' are. They are not insightful to me in the least, and in some cases they fly in the face of opinions expressed by multiple-time World Champions in print.

 

-Tate

 

I took you up on your suggestion.

 

Justin made an intelligent post (leaving aside his typo re his major suit holding). It was succint....he rarely writes at the same length as, for example, I do. However he set out his reasoning in an understandable fashion.....very few posters elaborate and most assume that their readers can fill in the blanks, especially if they (the posters) have made a very large number of posts and can thus expect most of the readers to know something about how they, the posters, think.

 

You called his choice of overcall 'ludicrous', without any supportive argument.

 

later, when called on this, you gave some arguments, but the starting point was you, not others.

 

later, you said that we ought to be aware that partner had strained to reopen. When called on this, you admitted that you ought to have said that partner 'may have' strained to reopen...this is a non-trivial distinction. Once again, the criticisms voiced of you were in response to a weak (indeed, mistaken) point raised by you early in your posts.

 

You clearly resent the respect given to Justin. Maybe there are a few posters who upvote his a little exuberantly, but I don't assess his posts by his accumulated upvote total...I don't know what it is, other than I'm sure it's much higher than mine! And I suspect that the vast majority of posters and lurkers feel the same way.....even when we disagree with him, we find that thinking about what he has said gives us a better understanding of the issue.

 

so chill out.

[wyman]

There's another issue here, and I've had to calm down before attempting to write this.

 

HL keeps saying that he's happy to hear people debate him on an issue. Something like: "well, I've explained my reasoning, go ahead and debate me," which is fine. But this usually ends up with "you haven't proved me wrong, so I must be right."

 

There are a lot of decisions in this game where one can write a few convincing paragraphs outlining exactly why one course of action is more likely to succeed than another. Play problems lend themselves nicely to this, for example. But bidding decisions are considerably harder to be provably right about. So many things make these decisions subjective -- style, opponents (including history), system, colors.

 

Bidding problems rarely have a right or wrong answer. HL seems to have the strongest feelings in the thread about the (non-)overcall in the OP, but most people are on the fence. "It's not my style" or "I would overcall but barely" or "I wouldn't, but I wouldn't object if partner did" or "In my partnership this isn't an overcall, but playing with person X, it would be" I think sums up the feelings of most.

 

This is an answer to OP's question. He came here not to look in an answer key for the right or wrong answer necessarily, but to hear what others would do with the hand. OP can decide, based on his experience and on reading the forums for some time, how much weigh to give to each of the responses, and he (and his partner) will develop their own style (which needn't match any of ours) accordingly.

 

One point I want to make explicit: When Justin comes into a thread and says "I'd bid 1S," that's information. I don't need him to spell out the colors or the fact that I have 3 dead in RHO's suit. I can see that. I want to know how much weight to give that. My internal learner sees that Justin would overcall, and that bit helps me make decisions on future hands (after all, I'll likely never see this exact hand again). Since I give more weight to Justin's decisions than you do (which is a personal decision), I want to see what he says, even if he doesn't write 2 pages on the subject. Attacking his action will only serve to make him (and other players of his caliber) post less, and that's bad for the forums. Again, not every post needs to be as long as this one. Not every vote needs to have a "why" along with it to be meaningful.

[HighLow21]

I took you up on your suggestion.

 

Justin made an intelligent post (leaving aside his typo re his major suit holding). It was succint....he rarely writes at the same length as, for example, I do. However he set out his reasoning in an understandable fashion.....very few posters elaborate and most assume that their readers can fill in the blanks, especially if they (the posters) have made a very large number of posts and can thus expect most of the readers to know something about how they, the posters, think.

 

You called his choice of overcall 'ludicrous', without any supportive argument.

 

later, when called on this, you gave some arguments, but the starting point was you, not others.

 

later, you said that we ought to be aware that partner had strained to reopen. When called on this, you admitted that you ought to have said that partner 'may have' strained to reopen...this is a non-trivial distinction. Once again, the criticisms voiced of you were in response to a weak (indeed, mistaken) point raised by you early in your posts.

 

You clearly resent the respect given to Justin. Maybe there are a few posters who upvote his a little exuberantly, but I don't assess his posts by his accumulated upvote total...I don't know what it is, other than I'm sure it's much higher than mine! And I suspect that the vast majority of posters and lurkers feel the same way.....even when we disagree with him, we find that thinking about what he has said gives us a better understanding of the issue.

 

so chill out.

 

I'm chill. :) As Walter Sobchak says in The Big Lebowski, "I'm calmer than you are, dude." B-)

 

I just explained this in a private message to Phil, but I'll rexplain it here.

 

Point 1: Calling an action ludicrous is not a judgment of the actor. It is a judgment of the action, and I stand by the judgment that an overcall is "nutso to me" or "terrible bridge" or "ludicrous" in this situation. That is an opinion of the action, not the actor.

 

Point 2: For the record, I originally read JLOGIC's post as saying "I would overcall under different circumstances, but here are 3 reasons I wouldn't." I still stand by that interpretation. But I can concede that he might be saying "I would overcall. Here are 3 reasons why others might not." This is vague phrasing and it's characteristic.

 

Point 3: This is exactly what I meant earlier by saying that I find his posts unhelpful. I find them sloppy, disorganized, uninsightful, and not fully (if at all) explained. I guess I just got to the point where I'm tired of it.

 

Point 4: I still think that even in the most favorable interpretation of his posts, they are dangerous. Sure, he is an expert with a whole host of partner agreements, but his statements can be interpreted very dangerously by the other 99% of the bridge-playing population who aren't playing at Expert/World Class levels with a whole host of system gadgets and a profound understand of what makes this hand different from, say, ♠J107xx ♥AKx ♦T98x ♣x. So my point beyond point 3 (unhelpful) is, point 4, they can be dangerously misinterpreted by people who don't fully understand all the considerations, and I can even pinpoint an example of this happening in another forum post about a different hand. I called his advice on a particular situation, or at least the interpretation of his advice as stated by the poster of the hand, terrible advice.

 

Point 5: Calling me a clown or a jackass is a judgment of me that has nothing to do with the soundness of my argument. These are VERY different things. VERY VERY different. And this is EXACTLY what got me angry. I have no beef with JLOGIC, I just don't have any esteem for what he writes. But I take deep, personal exception to namecalling.

 

It was the ad hominem attacks and attacks without the facts that angered me. Not that I hate the overcall and others may love it because JLall seems to love it; not because they disagree with any of my arguments or how I presented them.

 

I'm sorry, guys. I'm not going to play nice with people who call me names, and if you critique my arguments without a solid understanding of the facts, I'm going to nail your argument to the wall and carve my initials into it.

 

Just as I would expect you to do of me.

 

Right, let's get on then.

 

-Tate

[HighLow21]

There's another issue here, and I've had to calm down before attempting to write this.

<snip>

 

I read everything you wrote, Wyman, and it's much better than what you've written earlier today.

 

However, I'm not missing the point. You're missing the point.

 

See my post above.

[wyman]

I read everything you wrote, Wyman, and it's much better than what you've written earlier today.

 

Your approval means everything to me.

[quiddity]

Wow, this thread got ugly in a hurry. I doubt Justin needs so many well-intentioned citizens leaping to his defense every time someone disagrees with him.

I think the initial overcall is close but I would bid. I'd like to avoid having to make an uncomfortable decision later in the auction and at a higher level.

[quiddity]

This is an answer to OP's question. He came here not to look in an answer key for the right or wrong answer necessarily, but to hear what others would do with the hand. OP can decide, based on his experience and on reading the forums for some time, how much weigh to give to each of the responses, and he (and his partner) will develop their own style (which needn't match any of ours) accordingly.

 

This is ironic. As I read the thread, HL gave his opinion on the overcall (he thinks it's ludicrous) and you attacked and insulted him for it.

[HighLow21]

This is ironic. As I read the thread, HL gave his opinion on the overcall (he thinks it's ludicrous) and you attacked and insulted him for it.

 

THANK YOU. Finally, someone understands what pissed me off so much in the first place!!!

[HighLow21]

Your approval means everything to me.

 

I'm going to refrain from resorting to your level by calling you any names now. Suffice it to say, I will interpret this as non-sarcastically as possible.

[nigel_k]

I would not overcall but would bid 3♠ after the double. Partner could be balanced with three spades and a minimum, but that is the worst case. My hand has improved a lot after the double because the three small hearts and poor spades are not such a concern. It's a lot better than a hand I might bid 2♠ with, e.g. JTxx xxx AJxx xx.

 

Re the other stuff, is it so hard to just respond to the substance of a post and ignore the tone and anything else you don't like?

[S2000magic]

I, for one, would not have overcalled 1♠; the suit's too weak for my taste. Move the diamond honors to the spades and I'd overcall.

 

As for what to do now, this is interesting in light of a conversation I've been having with my favorite partner about adopting an idea of Robert Ewen's: a balancing double is made with the same shape/strength requirements as a direct double. (I won't go into all of the arguments and ancillary agreements here; he presents his ideas well in Doubles for Takeout, Penalties, and Profit.) With that agreement, partner wouldn't have strained to double, and this is a fine 2♠ bid. Partner will know that I'm bidding because I have something worthwhile (the 2♣ bid relieved me of the obligation to bid), and if he raises me to 3♠ (showing 17 - 19 points or so) I'll happily continue to 4♠ as I would have bid as I did without the ♦K.

 

Opposite a partner who might have strained to double, I'd still bid 2♠ (knowing that it might be too high); I'd expect partner to raise to 3♠ only with 17 - 19 points, so I'd carry on to 4♠ over 3♠.

[S2000magic]

It's a lot better than a hand I might bid 2♠ with, e.g. JTxx xxx AJxx xx.

After opener bids over the double, I wouldn't dream of bidding 2♠ on this hand, but I concede that it's a matter of style. (Partner will have another chance to speak, which he'll do if he's strong.) If my partner knows that I'd 2♠ on this hand (and he's not a lunatic), we're probably fine.

[mike777]

[hv=pc=n&n=sjt765ht94dak84c6&d=w&v=b&b=4&a=1hppd2c]133|200[/hv]

 

Team game. No relevant special agreements.

 

1. Agree/disagree with decision to NOT overcall first round?

 

2. At this stage in bidding, what general strength (and/or spade length) would be suggested by 2♠, 3♠, and 4♠ bids?

 

3. What is your call (if not clear from your answer to #2)?

 

 

fwiw I would not overcall since pards would expect an opening hand vul

 

now after our pass I think 2s would be roughly 9-10 bal...this is a bit more so I would try 3s at imps vul.

[Statto]

I've skipped through most of this thread which seems to be completely off-topic.

 

I wouldn't overcall 1♠ in the 1st instance as the suit is poor and it has little pre-emptive value. After the double I'd start with a quiet free bid of 2♠ because partner could be balancing light, but if partner makes any further noises I'm going to 4♠, as it looks likely we have a double fit. That 2♣ rebid by RHO has improved my hand. I've no argument against 3♠ now, or even a 1♠ overcall - the ♦ and shape are quite nice.

[kenrexford]

I wouldn't bid 3♠ because I think 2♥ contextually shows a good hand with spades. So, I'd bid 2♥ and allow partner some slack if he bids 2♠ back.

 

And, I think everyone who does not bid 2♥ in this sequence is a ludicrous idiot, and I down-vote you as a person, you ignorant sluts.

[JLOGIC]

Lol wow just saw this thread...

 

Highlow did I kill your baby or something? Until today I have not even responded/read anything you have posted in a long time, why so much hostility? It is fine if you don't like the content or writing of my posts, but why does a guy as sensitive as you feel the need to say it so often? It's cool we get it :)

 

I know you haven't been around very long but it's funny that you think people just agree with me because I have won stuff. I have posted here for like ~7 years. Who knows how many posts I have, maybe 20,000? When I started posting here, I hadn't won anything. I had to earn respect through posting here just like you or anyone else did. Maybe you will be a forum-superstar in 7 years too, keep it up kid :)

[gwnn]

Ken really is a clown.

[mikeh]

I wouldn't bid 3♠ because I think 2♥ contextually shows a good hand with spades. So, I'd bid 2♥ and allow partner some slack if he bids 2♠ back.

 

And, I think everyone who does not bid 2♥ in this sequence is a ludicrous idiot, and I down-vote you as a person, you ignorant sluts.

And there I was, saying (sort of) nice things about you in a parallel thread!!!!!!!!!