The reason I think cuebidding is right is that you can fairly easily find out how much wasted stuff partner has in hearts. If he cuebids the heart AK, you know slam's probably not going to be great. If he doesn't have the heart ace, he's probably got enough stuff elsewhere to make slam useful (either the club ace, or diamond minor honors that will make the diamonds run).

Of course, here partner has neither, but that's because he doesn't have his bid. Stick the diamond Q in partner's hand (or heck, even the club jack) and slam is suddenly much colder. On the other hand, give him

Txxx
AKJx
xxx
Qx

and we're in a much less happy place.

Cool hand in the Vanderbilt

Zia in third seat sitting with...

J75
K6
T986
K876

Hamman opens 4H and auctions goes

4H-X-P-5S
P-6S-AP

Hamman leads the AH and dummy comes down

AKQ3
2
532
QJT52

Any idea how to beat it?

Without peeking at the spoiler:


Edit: score it up.

Yo that was pretty trivial to drop the Kh

gutsy 6s bid btw

I didn't say it was particularly challenging, especially when put into a problem. I just thought it was a cool hand . Hey the hand made the bridge bulletin after I posted about it.

Fun one from yesterday:

You hold
K3
105
AJ765
9632

(1) 1 (1N) P
(2N) P (3N) AP

Your lead?

Once you pick, Q2:

I should probably ask (and it may matter) matchpoints or IMPs?



As played, I'm completely lost, I admit it. It feels like a club to mess with declarer's transportation might be right, but I can't construct a hand that makes sense.

Scoring type?



And when you're on lead again:


in b4 myrm sucks at defense

I know it's still nationals but will anyone be on to play tonight?

Update, Joe Grue in the finals of the vanderbilt, Joel won another pair game with our friend gavin who lived in our house for a year. Still haven't binked.

Bridge part of TR

So played Friday and Saturday. Partnered with brrrr for Friday for a Compact KO. He found some friends of his. We were in bracket 4 of 9. Rolled the first round easily. Second round brrr had an interesting hand

ATx
AQJxx
AKTxx
/

r/w RHO opens
(3c)-X-(p)-4C
(5c)-6c-(p)-6h
(7c)-??



Brrrr was asking people the rest of the day what they thought. Seemed to get different answers from everyone. Joel Wooldridge said it was close and didn't seem to have a strong opinion either way. So lose 17 IMPs, but survive to tie it and go to a 2 board playoff. Hand 1 was a fairly standard 11 card spade fit with opps, but I had 4 aces so doubled down 1. Second hand I am in 2S making 4 on a misdefense, opps go for the gusto and go to 4s-1. We roll our next 2 rounds. Though I was starting to get tired and was getting lazier on defense. There was one hand where brrrr misdecided which card to keep and told me after the hand "Hey you got to give me honest count in one suit." When I didn't realize what I had done, I knew that was a bad sign for my play. But still won 12.32 gold for winning, which is most I have won in a single event.

Over dinner we arranged a compact KO team that included fmk, brrr, myself, 2 other extremely good juniors, and another good Indian player. Nice to be on a 6 person team where you are by far the worst player. Sure enough first hand I butcher the defense in a complete noobish way to lose 10 IMPs. But really our team was too good and we rolled, even though I was out of it, and the team was drinking every round.

Round went on until 2:30 AM or so. Probably didn't get to sleep until 3:30 or so and woke up around 10 or so, and tossed and turned all night. I know a lot of bridge players can play well with no sleep, but I was pretty much out of it right from the get go. Met with Atakdog to discuss a convention card at around noon or so to play in the Open Swiss. We didn't have any huge misunderstandings. But it seems like every time I was deciding between 2 bids, I chose wrong and was horribly punished. I mean a lot of the time when that happens, you find up in the right spot anyways, but yesterday, no. Also defense seemed to get even worse, and pretty much always made the wrong choice, which was clearly frustrating Atak. Don't really think I made any bad mistakes in declarer play, but didn't really get any interesting hands.

At one point Atak said I was clearly not used to playing with someone who is watching every card I played. Which is obviously true. I guess that is the big thing I need to work on, it just paying attention to what cards I am playing, and what my partners cards might mean, even if my dad isn't trying to mean anything by it. But yeah, was kind of frustrated by how my play kept seeming to get worse through the 2 days and decided not to play today. Led out of turn one point late in the evening, and was close to again a few points after that. Kind of felt bad to leave Atak without a partner for today after he traveled from Chicago, but I was kind of beat up. But in the end we ended with 68/160 VPs and 3/8 wins for 1.59 platinum, so I guess it wasn't all bad.

Anyways enjoyed, sorry I didn't play better yesterday.

so i had this awesome idea to play several long sessions of bridge on BBO using a pseudonym and only use the "Help me find a game" function to find tables. I was going to document how many hands per session, imps won or lost, number of different partners, comments about my play from my partners, and interesting hands and stuff and i was going to post the results here and on BBF.

the third hand in i was dealt Axx -- AQJxx AQJxx. I opened 1D it went (p) 2D (3H) 4C (4H) 5D (p) so i tried 5H and it went float.

i'm sorry to disappoint you guys who might have been interested in this exercise, but i admit i underestimated how ****ing ******ed the average person is.

also, on hand number 2, the auction by my opponents (we were silent) went 1NT 2C 2H 2NT 4S 5S dummy hit with xxx Jxx QJx AKJx obv

I once got criticized by a BBO random for missing a game when I responded 2C to her 1H opening and she passed. I can't even imagine how you can possibly think you know enough about bridge to criticize someone for their bidding when you don't know a 2 over 1 response is forcing.

Someone will need to let me know how bad doubling is. Yes, I know 7h is going to have decent play.

I don't care about points. I really don't. I tell myself that I really don't. But holy cow, that makes me just a little jealous.

Nice team.

Seriously, enjoy the experience. You're going to improve by leaps and bounds.

Yeah, that's what you get, unfortunately. My sympathies.

I usually assume they thought they were a passed hand or something nonsensical.

Pass seems clear to me, invitational to 7H.

I had game going values and 3 hearts. Partner told me it was my fault for not bidding 3H...BBO randoms are sometimes that bad.

Yeah I don't really care about points on the fact that I won't show up to a game just because it is triple point night. But I care about points when I win a lot . I pretty much know how a client feels like after being on that midnight team...and yeah I definitely learned a lot from the experience. Need to reread that defense book I have, or maybe get one on just signalling better.

For that hand with brrrr, X is bad if you think 7H has play. This is the most obvious forcing pass situation ever. The question is, is your hand so good to not even bother with forcing pass.

Well, why not let partner help? If he bids 7H after pass, you don't have to make a decision. :P If he X's and it comes back to you, you can still pull (if that's what you decide) unless he tanks of course. But if he has like Jxxx/K10xx/Q/QJ8x, he can easily just smash 7C, so I think you've gotta invite him into this discussion, especially with your spade holding when you know he's got some spades over there the quality of which will make or break your contract.

I'm all for forcing passes when the time's right, but if you make a forcing pass AT THE SEVEN LEVEL, you have to respect partner's decision.

My default when people bid like this is that by now I should know if they're really good (in which case I expect about 11.8 clubs on average over there and a forcing pass is good IMO) or really bad (in which case I'm probably just smashing this, taking the money, and winning by 50 on the other boards).

Yes, I was sort of kidding when I said you could pull later -- I mean, you can legally do so, but hands where we want to smash this are in pard's range, so there's no reason not to just go with it.

7H is too unilateral imo.

Agree with what you said about the caliber of player also. I dont know about 11.8 clubs, but we're not getting rich X'ing this if the player is good. 7Cx may well be par, though.

And if the player is a huge joker, well, then I'm still passing, but I'll feel less bad when pard pulls out a big stack of X cards and throws them on the table.

There is always a cost to making a pass you're sure is forcing: it may get passed. Partner may have a brain fart, partner may be bad, partner may think you tanked and believe (incorrectly) that that bars him, you may be wrong about whether it should be forcing, and any number of other things can happen. This doesn't mean you can't make a forcing pass, but it does mean you need a good reason.

Here, I do think you have a good reason: your spades are poor (in context) but the rest of your hand is very offensive. You don't know whether to play or defend, so I think you can pass and hope partner works out that KQ of spades and K of hearts is enough to bid, but less isn't. He may believe that any holding without an ace isn't enough, but in that case you haven't lost too much if your alternative was doubling.

If you believe partner will not be able to judge correctly, or may pass, then you are on your own; I'd probably choose 7H. The actual hand is unfortunate because partner is dead minimum for his bidding, but so be it. If I do make a forcing pass I expect partner to make the wrong decision about a third of the time, but the error will almost always be doubling when 7H makes, not bidding it when it fails.

I'd expect partner to double here after a forcing pass, actually. The club ace when partner is making a forcing pass (which sort of implies first round club control) looks wasted.

And, while I agree with your warning about the dangers of the not-so-forcing-as-you-thought pass, this one passes the "the caddy knows this is a forcing pass" rule.

Well, how do you bid
-
-
x
AKQJTxxxxxxx

opposite good, thinking opponents?

(notsureifserious.jpg, but I think I am.)

depends on the spots

i think this is the clear answer. i wasnt positive pass would be interpreted this way, and i thought 7H had lotssssssss of chances. i pretty much bought the worst worst layout imaginable imo.