I can't make 7NT. I'm missing A.

No, I meant I think you can make 7C. (Meant to say "make a seven on a non-trump lead...") Not sure though -- West may need to hold all three diamond honors. And a trump lead would still beat it.

Very lucky obviously, because the normal spade lead would beat it too, if West had a spade. But with [void] QT8xx AQ9x Txxx or some such, I figure a trump lead is about 35% likely. Dunno, maybe not, and it's academic anyway because seven would be a very silly contract.

Yep, 6N's going to be the right contract a whole lot of the time. Liking 4N (quantitative is how I would interpret it) more and more.

I have a hand play question:

Say you're looking to clear the trump suit, and the two hands have:

K T x x

A x x x x

You play the Ace, with which East drops the Q. Then, you follow with a low trump, and West play lows. Is the higher percentage play to finesse or play for the drop (assuming you don't know any other information)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princip...choice_(bridge)

interesting hand: w/r, I deal and have:

s: AJ4
h: KQJ4
d: AK
c: K964

lho passes, partner bids 4h... do you bid slam directly, or try blackwood?

What Wyman said. Odds for the finesse are roughly twice as high.

You can tackle this in 2 ways:
(1) Bid 5, asking partner to bid 7 with first round control in clubs. This is "standard" over a pre-emptive 4major opening, but is so rare, hardly anyone knows it.
(2) Play the variation of Roman Keycard Blackwood that allows partner to answer 6, showing an odd number of keycards and a club void.

Neither are common knowledge.

I assume LHO dealt, not you, since he passed first.

Partner should bid 6 showing 1 ace and a club void (bid 6 of the void suit). With 2 aces and a void, he would bid 5N.

Didn't see this before posting. This method is used (commonly, I thought) with standard blackwood as well. From http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...4C0A961948260:

Assuming I didn't deal, and partner has opened with a preempt, I just raise to six. I can tell from my own hand that his heart suit must include the ace, and thou shalt not preempt with two aces.

Opposite an active preemptor, who ought to have only six tricks for a 4H bid at favorable vulnerability, I am stretching a bit to say I have six cover cards for him. I expect him to make six maybe 60% of the time, but to go off one (when he has xx in clubs) a lot more often than he will make seven.

yeah, lho dealt

Wyman linked to an article on it, but in case it isn't clear:

The cases you can handle are Qxx/J (finesse wins) and xx/QJ (drop wins). Each is about equally likely to begin with, but the finesse is still a much better play because:

- when RHO holds the bare jack, he must play it at trick one;
- when RHO holds QJ tight, he can choose either card first; 50% of the time he will choose the jack, 50% of the time the queen (assuming he's not a novice).

This means that, starting with the simplifying assumption that the two cases were equally likely (which is not true but close), a disproportionate amount of the jacks that show up will be singleton, because the singleton jacks were forced (hence the "principle of restricted choice"), whereas the jacks from queen-jack represented choices that the player sometimes would not make.

I believe Terrence Reese was the one who first published something about this, predating Marilyn Mach vos Savant by quite some time. (I assume this is in the Wikipedia article, though I haven't looked.)

On 64's hand, it is so partner dependent... W/R, if I'm your partner, you ask for aces and are surprised if I have one. (Actually, that'd really only be true if I were first or third seat, not second. And it would not be true if I thought you were the type of partner who would play me for having a decent hand.) With my grandmother (who is 98, but with whom I do occasionally play), you bid 7H -- 7NT is cold, but you want to let her play it (and she will play it out rather than claiming).

As for void-showing Blackwood, there is a big difference between what is standard practice among experts and what is common. And the methods described (including 5NT to show two keys and a useful void) are, as far as I know, standard practice among experts and neither common nor rare among non-experts. I've played with pickup partners at all levels in many ACBL (i.e., North America) tournaments, and I would assume a flight A pickup partner would get it right, but I wouldn't try it below that. By the way, I'd be wrong about the flight A player about half the time, but it's probably safe to try it if I'm responding. It is not safe to try 5C in response to 4H, so you can't do that without a specific agreement.

In other words -- partner's fault, not yours.

Let me add that with my partner (12 year partnership, 24-page system book) I don't play this part of RKC Blackwood because it doesn't come up often enough to be sure we'll both remember it when it does come up.

New hand problem: r/w dealer: W, you're sitting south

Q 9 8 7 5
A K 9 8 6 4 3

8

LHO passes, P opens 1.

How are we bidding this?

I went 1, P responded 2, I bid 2; he went to 3N. I then bid 4. He corrected to 4, and LHO ended up doubling.



Is there a standard way to show a 7-5 hand?

There is no way to bid 7-5 hands really -- they're just too infrequent to bother.

In this hand, I wouldn't bother bidding 2. Partner certainly has less than 4 of them, so basically you're hoping to find him with exactly 3 spades, otherwise you'd rather play in hearts. So over 2, I bid 3, an invite in hearts. Partner should pass this, and not bid 3NT.

In the auction as given, 3NT by partner is also a poor bid. 2 exposes a severe misfit situation, and then it's nearly always a bad idea to run to NT as a last resort. With partner's hand I would bid 3 over 2, and you should pass that (or bid 3, but that sounds too forcing for my liking).

I like your bidding. I agree fab that your partners 3NT bid was poor; 3D is possible, but so is 2N. Incidentally, it looks like 3N's a little better than 50%, but I'd probably still pull with your hand; your partner's correction to 4S is also a mistake (though you can't make either major suit game).

I think the 2 is questionable, as we will miss 3NT alot opposite a random 8-count, but I don't think there's an alternative

I think the 2 bid is unnecessary; if partner doesn't have 4, your better off just bidding your hearts. Also, the fact that partner may later correct to spades later with one more spade than heart is also a foreseeable downside. I like 3 here, although it's close.

I think 3NT next is beyond obvious here; he's got a supermax based on his previous bid, a running suit, and a substantial club stop. He needs very little to make 3NT.

You then have a tough decision whether you should pull or not. At the table I probably would have bid 4 as well, but looking at it now, his 3NT bid is a strong statement, suggesting all he needed from you was heart and club stoppers, so I think passing is better in retrospect.

My auction is unlikely to be any better, as I'll end up in 3NT or 4H (mayeb doubled). 3NT has a shot with misdefense though (as it always seems to).

When your partner opens 1 and rebids them, you
should REALLY dislike your hand:

Partner has 6 or more diamonds, and given your distribution,
he probably has at least as many clubs as spades or hearts;
i.e., the only key club is the ace. He's unlikely to have the
Q and he's likely to have at most one control in spades
(the most beautiful card outside of hearts is the A).
The worst scenario is finding partner with solid diamonds and
worthless club honors (pretty much what you found!).

You prefer to play in hearts, but there's not much chance
partner has at least two cover cards. I'd rebid a measly 2
here. You don't have game often enough to justify a 3
call: and you're destined to lose some spades too. If partner
has the A, he's likely to turn up with little or no help in
spades. If you are lucky to find partner with 2 baby hearts,
you still need a 2-2 trump break to avoid a trump loser.

Other than a 2 rebid, the only reasonable alternative
is a 3 rebid, but you'll sometimes be in an unmakeable
game (some of those you'll even get "whacked" and even if
you aren't, being red vs white, it's a "hundred a pop") and
some of the time, you're only entitled to 8 tricks, so -200
will be a bottom in matchpoints.

Alright I usually ask about bidding, but this time its the play of the hand that had me stumped. Me and my partner ended up in 4S. Yeah 3NT is better. But we weren't playing 4th suit forcing at the time. and after 1C, 1S, 2D, I thought it was the best bid as declarer.

Dummy comes down with


KQ87
K965
A9742

I am declarer with

AKQ854
AJ
742
Q3

lead is a heart which is won in hand. 2nd trick I draw trumps and LHO plays 10 . 3rd trick I draw trump again and LHO is out. I figured out one way 4s makes, but not sure if it is the only way, or if it makes only because the way the rest of the cards lie. Probably is, but it took me a while to figure out

There's basically no chance of game here, so I would simply bid 2D and then bid 3D over whatever anyone else bids if possible. You could also bid 3D immediately if you're confident it won't confuse your partner.

If you don't have Blackwood available this is probably reasonable. Partner will show up with a diamond void or the SA a lot of the time.

Erk. Without agreement 4H could mean anything, but I would assume it means a long suit and weakish hand. With a good partner I might try 5D which suggests the spade weakness, but with a pickup I'd be afraid they'd interpret this as a diamond suit, which would create havoc, so I'd pass.

Good lord. I would just pass. Double would be takeout and you may well have no game available. 3 spades down several is quite likely to be your best score if partner can't reopen.

Edit: Probably a bit pessimistic about the chances for game here after reading other replies. I hate the idea of trying to play in NT though. You could try 4NT for the minors assuming partner understands what that means. If I don't have an unusual NT available I would pass though since trying to find a good contract is a bit rough without it.

Rough hand and unavoidable result, although you should have been in 4H, which would have been possible if partner had restricted himself to 2NT. Your reverse should be a game force, so the rest of the auction should go 2NT 3H 3S 4H pass.

Partner's 2D bid is horrible, facing me we would have been in slam ...

OK, spades are 5-2 and we're gonna lose 2 tricks there. If I play J, club to the ace, and run hearts, east can probably ruff in the 3rd or 4th heart. I'm hoping to at least get the 3rd heart thru, dumping a diamond and then another diamond. East ruffs and is now thrown in, I hope (I need something good here). He'll probably play his remaining trump, and then a club. I'm gonna play the Q to that.

It's hard to estimate what your chances are here.

No I meant when I played the second spade I found out LHO was out. So spades are 6-1 not 5-2.

Also we don't play reverses so I don't think his 2d bid is that bad. He would expect me to bid hearts if I had 4 of them. I considered slam, but if I did play 4sf, the bidding should go 1c, 1s, 2d, 2h, 3h, 3s, 3nt correct?

You can't "not play reverses". It's a reverse bid, period. You CAN agree to also bid that with weakish hands (like this one) but that's a bad idea on purely logical grounds: if partner has no fit for the 2nd suit, and you have no fit for partner's suit, you are forcing yourself to the 3-level with weak values and a poor fit. That's just not a good idea in general, it gets you too high too often.
Also, it makes it a lot harder to find out how high to go if the opener's rebid has such a wide range of strength.

As for the play of the hand: with J97x left for RHO, you need a small miracle to make here. I'd now play heart jack, play a diamond to the king and dump diamonds on the hearts. That has reasonable chances of success is the diamond ace is onside.

Even if you don't have any agreement about what reverses mean, 2D is a bad bid. You can't possibly make it nonforcing and because of this there are very few sequences in which it turns out well, mostly because it precludes playing in 1NT or two of a minor, which may well be the best spots. It is rare that you will get to say 3 of a minor and have that be a better spot to play than 1NT AND not be able to reach it by rebidding 1NT rather than 2D.

The aim of bidding is to reach the best contract, not try to communicate your exact hand to partner. 1NT has a couple of major advantages over 2D in this regard - it is flexible and it limits your strength immediately.

Anyway enough soapboxing now, given it wasn't even you who made the bid

I would bid it as:

1C 1S
1NT 2D*
2H 3S
3NT

2D is New Minor Forcing. Since NMF shows at least invitational values, the jump to 3S on the next round is game forcing. Without that, I would probably just jump to 4S over 1NT, which is unfortunate on this hand, but that's why stuff like NMF is good.

If it went via 1C 1S 2D I would use the sequence you gave.